HISTORY OF

THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH

FROM  THE APOSTOLIC AGE

TO

THE REFORMATION

A.D. 64-1517

IN EIGHT VOLUMES

VOLUME VI

BY

JAMES CRAIGIE ROBERTSON

CANON OF CANTERBURY,

AND PROFESSOR OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY IN KING’S COLLEGE. LONDON

BOOK VII.

FROM THE ELECTION OF INNOCENT III. TO THE DEATH OF BONIFACE VIII., a.d. i 198-1303.

CHAPTER I. INNOCENT III. A.D. 1198-1216

I.-AFFAIRS OF GERMANY.

2.-A.D. 1198. AFFAIRS OF SICILY.

3.-FREDERICK II

4.-PHILIP AUGUSTUS AND INGEBURGA.

5.-AFFAIRS OF ENGLAND

6.-AFFAIRS OF HUNGARY, SPAIN, ETC.

7.-THE CRUSADES

8.-THE ALBIGENSIAN WAR

9.-A.D. 1215-16. MENDICANT ORDERS. DEATH OF INNOCENT III.

10.-THE FOURTH LATERAL COUNCIL. A.D. 1215-16.

CHAPTER II.FROM THE ELECTION OF POPE HONORIUS III. TO THE DEATH OF INNOCENT IV. A.D. I216-1254

1.-HONORIUS III AND FREDERICK II

2.-ENGLAND—PAPAL EXACTIONS.

3.-ALBIGENSIAN WAR.

4.-CRUSADE OF LEWIS IX.

CHAPTER III. FROM THE ELECTION OF POPE ALEXANDER IV TO THE DEATH OF LEWIS IX OF FRANCE. A.D. 1254-1270.

CHAPTER IV. FROM THE ELECTION OF POPE GREGORY X TO THE DEATH OF NICOLAS IV, A.D. 1271-1292

CHAPTER V. CELESTINE V AND BONIFACE VIII, A.D. 1292-1303.

CHAPTER VI PROPAGATION OF THE GOSPEL.

1.-THE TARTARS

2.-NESTORIANS. JACOBITES

3.-ARMENIA.

4.-LIVONIA.

5.-PRUSSIA.

6.-RUSSIA.

7.-JEWS AND MAHOMETANS. RAYMOND LULL.

CHAPTER VII. SECTARIES.

1.-THE INQUISITION

2.-THE STEDINGERS.

3.-BEGHARDS AND BEGUINES.

4.-SECT OF THE FREE SPIRIT.

5.-THE “APOSTLES”.

CHAPTER VIII. SUPPLEMENTARY.

I.The Hierarchy.

II. MONASTICISM

III. Rites and Usages.

IV. Arts and Learning.

CHAPTER I.

INNOCENT III. A.D. 1198-1216

I

AFFAIRS OF GERMANY.

At the death of Celestine the Third, the urgency of affairs appeared to supersede the observance of the rule which prescribed that the election of a pope should be deferred until after the funeral of his predecessor. On the same day on which Celestine breathed his last, a meeting of cardinals, attended by all but four of the twenty-eight who then formed the college, was held in a church near the Colosseum—probably the monastic church of St. Gregory, on the Coelian hill. Of three names proposed for the vacant dignity, that of John, bishop of Sabina, found the greatest favor; but this cardinal himself, and the aged Octavian of Ostia, whose influence was powerful in the consistory, exerted themselves that the votes should be united in favour of Lothair, cardinal of SS. Sergius and Bacchus; and Lothair, although he endeavored by tears and struggles to decline the papacy, was elected by his brethren, invested with the mantle, presented to the expectant people, and enthroned in the Lateran as Innocent the Third.

Innocent was of the family of the Counts of Segni, who took from their rank the surname of Conti. The Conti had mixed deeply in the feuds of their neighborhood, and had usually been arrayed in opposition to the late pope’s family, the Orsini. Innocent had studied at Paris, a circumstance to which he refers with interest in a letter addressed to Philip Augustus; and he had displayed and strengthened his hierarchical feeling by a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Thomas the Martyr at Canterbury. After having further prosecuted his studies at Bologna, where he acquired a profound knowledge of ecclesiastical law, he returned to Rome, was ordained sub-deacon by Gregory VIII, and soon after became a canon of St. Peter’s. In the twenty-ninth year of his age, he was advanced to the dignity of cardinal by Clement III, to whom he was nearly related; and under this pope, as under his predecessor, Lucius, he was employed in important missions. The papacy of Celestine, to whom he was obnoxious on account of the hostility between their families, condemned him for a time to inaction, and he employed himself chiefly in study, which produced its fruit in a treatise “On the Contempt of the World”, and in other writings. The general tone of these is that of a rigid ascetic, withdrawn from the world and despising it—a tone seemingly very alien from the vigorous practical character which the author was soon to display. His sermons are remarkable for the acquaintance with Scripture which appears in them, and for his extraordinary delight in perverting its meaning by allegory—a practice which in later times enabled him to produce scriptural authority for all his pretensions and for everything that he might desire to recommend. And in his books “On the Sacred Mystery of the Altar”, he had laid down the highest Roman doctrine as to the elevation of St. Peter and his successors over all other apostles and bishops.

At the time of his election, Innocent was only thirty-seven years old, and on this account fears were entertained by some that he would not prove equal to the burden of the papal office. But all such apprehensions were speedily dispelled by the display of a character which united the boldness of Gregory VII with the politic caution and patience of Alexander III, and under him the papacy attained its highest elevation. The vast, although imperfect, collection of his letters attests that immense and varied activity which justified him in saying of himself—“Not only am I not allowed to contemplate, but I cannot even get leave to breathe; I am in such a degree made over to others that I almost seem to be altogether taken away from myself”. In what degree these letters may be regarded as his own compositions, it may be impossible to say; but there is in them a remarkable unity not only of character but of style. With much redundancy of words, and with that systematic abuse of Scripture which has been already mentioned as characteristic of him, they are marked throughout by the impress of his clear mind and of his powerful will. Yet stern as Innocent was in principle, fully as he upheld the proudest claims of the papacy—and not the less so for his continual affectation of personal humility—he appears to have been amiable in his private character. His contemporary biographer describes him as bountiful but not prodigal, as hot in temper, but easily appeased, and of a magnanimous and generous spirit. He is said to have been even playful in intercourse; he was a lover of poetry and of music, and some well-known hymns of the church have been ascribed to him. Among his defects is noted the common papal failing of a too great devotion to the interest of his own family; he erected a principality for his brother Richard, and provided for other kinsmen with a care which exposed him to reproach.

Innocent when chosen to the papacy was as yet only a deacon. Out of scrupulous regard for the laws of the church, he deferred his promotion to the order of priesthood until the next ember season; and, having then been duly ordained, he was consecrated and enthroned in St. Peter’s on the festival of the apostle’s Chair.

The pope immediately set on foot a reformation of his own household. The luxury of the court was exchanged for a rigid simplicity. The multitude of nobles who had lately thronged the palace were discarded, except on occasions of high ceremony, and the ordinary services were committed to ecclesiastics. The high-born pages were dismissed, but each of them was presented with a gift sufficient to pay the expenses of knighthood, and an attempt was made to extend to the general administration of the curia that freedom from corruption by which Innocent himself had been honorably distinguished as cardinal. A moderate table of fees for the preparation of bulls and for other official acts was established, and it was ordered that no officer should demand anything of suitors; but the permission to accept voluntary offerings may perhaps have been enough to frustrate in a great degree the effect of this salutary measure. By dismissing most of the doorkeepers Innocent rendered access to his own person more easy. He sat often in his consistory, where the clearness and equity of his judgments were greatly admired, so that lawyers and men of learning were in the habit of frequenting the court in order to hear him.

At the election of the pope, the Romans were clamorous for the donative with which they had been usually gratified on such occasions. Innocent thought it well to comply with their wishes, although he put off the payment until after his consecration; and thus he secured the support of the multitude for the important changes which he intended to effect. Hitherto the prefect of the city had held his office under the emperor. But Innocent abolished this last vestige of the imperial sovereignty, by compelling the prefect to take an oath of fidelity to himself, and to receive investiture at his hands, not by the secular symbol, a sword, but by a mantle and a silver cup. The citizens were also required to swear obedience to the pope. The power of the senate had centered in a single person, who bore the title of senator or consul. Innocent persuaded the senator, Scoto Paparone, to retire, and substituted another, who was bound by an oath to him, and whose tenure of office was annual. Thus the exclusive authority of the pope was established in Rome, although the pontificate of Innocent was not free from serious troubles in the municipal government, or from those outbreaks of the Roman factions which had so often disquieted his predecessors.

2

A.D. 1198. AFFAIRS OF SICILY.

Next to the affairs of his own city, those of central and southern Italy and of Sicily demanded the pope’s attention. The late emperor had established his military officers as dukes and counts, and these with their troops held possession of the country, even to the gates of Rome. In order to rid himself of his dangerous neighbors, Innocent was able to take advantage of the hatred which the Italians felt towards the Germans—an ancient hatred which had lately been rendered more intense by Henry’s violence and cruelties—and of the jealousies and rivalries by which the German chiefs were divided among themselves, each labouring for his own interest alone, while during the infancy of the young Frederick there was no power that could control or unite them. Conrad of Lützenburg, duke of Spoleto, whose wild and unsteady character had got for him from the Italians the name of Moscancervello, was persuaded to swear that he would obey the pope’s commands, and then, notwithstanding all that he could offer for leave to remain in Italy, was compelled to return to Germany. Greater difficulty was found in the case of Markwald of Anweiler, duke of Ravenna and seneschal of the empire—a bold, ambitious, and perfidious man, who was believed to have instigated his late sovereign to some of his worst excesses. Markwald professed to have been nominated by Henry on his death-bed as executor of his will and regent of Sicily. He had been expelled from Sicily by the emperor’s widow, Constance, who heartily espoused the cause of her own countrymen against the detested Germans; but he held possession of the Romagna with the march of Ancona, and was formidable from his power and wealth. Markwald, on being required by the pope to give up the patrimony of the church, attempted to draw Innocent into his interest—offering, on the strength of the late emperor’s testament, to raise the church to a grandeur such as it had never enjoyed since the days of Constantine. The pope, however, withstood this and all Markwald’s offers, whether of money or of other things, and compelled him, after having been excommunicated by two cardinals, to withdraw from the marches into the Apulian kingdom. The pope went about from city to city, receiving the allegiance of one after another. He got possession of many fortresses in the Campagna, and reduced its robber-nobility to order. The cities of Tuscany and of the duchy of Spoleto (with the exception of Pisa, which was excommunicated for its adherence to the Ghibelline party) were united in a league resembling that of the Lombards, under the patronage of the pope, to whom they took an oath of fidelity; and Innocent found that he could afford to refrain for a time from pressing the claims of the Roman church as to the countess Matilda’s donation, the exarchate of Ravenna, and the territory of Bertinoro—leaving these in the hands of their actual possessors, with an acknowledgment of the papal suzerainty. Among the acquisitions made during this rapid progress, although all were claimed as the ancient possessions of the church, there were many which really belonged to the empire; and these, when the imperial throne had again found an occupant, became subjects of dispute.

By a document which professed to be the will of the late emperor, it was directed that his widow and son should perform to the pope all the services that had been done by former kings of Sicily; that, in case of Frederick’s dying without an heir, the kingdom should devolve to the pope; that the pope should confirm to Frederick the empire and the kingdom of Sicily, and that in consideration of this certain territories, including almost the whole of the countess Matilda’s inheritance, should be given up to the Roman church. The genuineness of this document, however, has been much questioned, partly on the ground that it was never displayed by Markwald while it was in his possession; and that the deed on which Innocent afterwards rested his claims to Sicily was not this, but the will of the empress Constance. Constance, soon after her husband’s death, caused her son, then four years old, to be taken from the custody of the duchess of Spoleto (wife of Moscancervello), and conveyed to Sicily, where he was crowned as king in May 1198. In order to secure herself against the Germans, she opened negotiations with the pope, proposing to place the kingdom and its young sovereign under his especial protection; and Innocent took the opportunity to make favorable terms for the papacy, by requiring a renunciation of the privileges which had been granted to the Sicilian kings by Adrian IV, and confirmed by Clement, as to the election of bishops, and the matters of legations, appeals, and councils; he also required a yearly tribute of 600 tarenes for Apulia, and of 400 for Marsia. Constance’s envoys were forced, after a struggle, to submit; but before the treaty could reach Sicily, the empress died, leaving the pope as chief guardian of her son. Sicily and Apulia were for years a scene of anarchy, violence, bloodshed, and ceaseless intrigues. The pope provided Frederick with a tutor, Cencio Savelli, and endeavored to exercise authority by means of a legate. But the chancellor, Walter of Pagliara, bishop of Troia, who contrived also to possess himself in an irregular way of the vacant archbishopric of Palermo, compelled the legate to leave Sicily; and the kingdom was distracted and ravaged by the movements of Markwald, and of another German soldier, Diephold (or Theobald), count of Acerra, whom the pope ineffectually denounced with all the thunders of the church. With these two the chancellor Walter was sometimes at enmity, and sometimes in intimate alliance. At one time he held nearly absolute power, which he abused by a profligate disposal of dignities, and by selling part of the royal demesnes; at another time he was driven from Sicily, and reduced to wander about Apulia in poverty and contempt; and yet again he was able to recover his authority. He was deposed and excommunicated, defied the sentence, sued humbly for absolution, was admitted to mercy, and incurred a fresh excommunication. In July 1200, Markwald was defeated in Sicily by the pope’s cousin and general, James; his baggage was captured, and in it was found the alleged testament of Henry VI. Yet Markwald contrived once more to regain the ascendency, and got possession of the young king’s person; but in 1202 his career was cut short by death in consequence of a surgical operation.

A.D. 1198-1202. WALTER OF BRIENNE.

A new turn was given to Sicilian affairs by Walter of Brienne, a noble and gallant Frenchman, who had married one of king Tancred’s daughters after her release from her German prison, and in her right claimed the county of Lecce and the principality of Taranto, the original possessions of Tancred, which the late emperor had promised to restore to his family. Walter’s determination to attempt the recovery of these territories was sanctioned by the pope, on condition of his swearing before the college of cardinals that he would be faithful to Frederick, and would aid him against all his enemies. In order to raise money for the enterprise, Innocent authorized Walter to pledge his security for a large sum, and even assisted him with gifts; and Walter appeared in Apulia at the head of a French force which he had been able to enlist by means of pay and of promises.

The chancellor, Walter of Pagliara, after the death of Markwald, again entreated that he might be released from his excommunication; but, although this was granted, his petitions for restoration to the sees of Palermo and Troia were unsuccessful. The legate who pronounced his absolution endeavored to exact a promise that he would not oppose Walter of Brienne; but his answer was that he could not make such a promise, even if St. Peter himself required it, and if he knew that his refusal would involve his damnation. He therefore joined Diephold, who was the chief antagonist of the new adventurer. For a time Walter of Brienne was successful; he repeatedly defeated Diephold, and for four years the advantage of the war was on his side. But his successes produced an overweening confidence in the prowess of the French, as compared with the Germans; and in consequence of this he was surprised, defeated, and taken prisoner by Diephold in 1205. He died of the wounds which he had received in battle.

In 1207, while Frederick was in the hands of the chancellor Walter, a letter complaining of the durance in which he was held was circulated in his name. While the Germans were wholly bent on securing for themselves some advantages from the prevailing anarchy, Innocent, although mainly intent on keeping up the papal suzerainty over Sicily, was sincerely desirous to preserve Frederick’s royalty, and appears to have performed his duties as guardian with fidelity. In 1208, when the king had reached the age of fourteen, the guardianship expired, and in the following year, through Innocent’s mediation, Frederick married a daughter of the king of Aragon.

3

FREDERICK II

With regard to the greater dignity which had lately been connected with the kingdom of Sicily, Innocent was resolved to take advantage of circumstances for the enforcement of his theory as to the superiority of ecclesiastical over temporal power. Ever since the death of Henry III of Germany, the papacy had been gaining on the empire; for, although the Hildebrandine doctrine as to the supremacy of the church had been confronted by the despotic theory of the imperial power which had been propounded by the civil lawyers under Frederick Barbarossa, this had never been much more than a theory. And now that the representative of the imperial family was an infant, the time appeared to be come when the Hildebrandine claims might be successfully asserted in their fullest extent. Frederick had, indeed, already received the homage of the Germans as his father’s successor. But the inexpediency of a minor’s reign was strongly impressed on the minds of all by the remembrance of the troubles of Henry IV’s youth, and the obligation to Frederick was set aside under the pretext that it had been wrongfully extorted; that when it was exacted, he was but an infant, and even unbaptized; and that his father’s death, at a time when the son was too young to assume the government, had altered the conditions of the case. Philip, duke of Swabia, the youngest son of Frederick Barbarossa, on hearing of his brother’s death, hurried from Tuscany, of which he had been governor, to check by his presence the disorders which were certain to break out in Germany, and to secure the interest of his young nephew. But he found the feeling of opposition to the election of the child as king to be irresistibly strong, and the adherents of the Hohenstaufen interest entreated him to become himself the representative of his family in opposition to the other candidates who were set up for the crown. Of these, Berthold, duke of Zahringen, after having spent a large sum, shrank from further outlay, and was persuaded by an ample bribe to give in his adhesion to Philip; and Bernard of Saxony withdrew, partly from a dread of expense, and partly because he felt his health unequal to the labours of the office. The choice of the party opposed to the Swabian family—headed by Adolphus of Altena, archbishop of Cologne, a man of great ability, but ambitious, artful, and rapacious,—fell on Otho, a younger son of Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony, and nephew by his mother’s side of Richard king of England, by whom he had been created duke of Aquitaine and count of Poitou. Otho, who in childhood was involved in his father’s banishment, had grown up in England, and had been employed by his uncle as viceroy of Poitou; and Richard, who could not forget his German captivity, although he declined to attend an election, to which he was summoned in right of the titular kingdom of Provence, bestowed on him by the late emperor, sent commissioners to represent him, recommended the cause of his nephew to the pope, and aided Otho with money which he levied by additional taxes on his subjects. Philip was chosen defender of the kingdom by an assembly of princes and prelates, mostly from the eastern part of Germany, at Arnstadt, near Erfurt, on the 6th of March 1198; Otho, whose strength lay along the Rhine and in the north-west of the country, was elected about Easter by a rival assembly at Andernach, but did not arrive in Germany until Philip had appeared for ten weeks to be without a rival. Each of the competitors was in the earliest manhood—Otho, twenty-three years of age, and Philip younger by a year. In personal character, in wealth, and in the number of his adherents, Philip had the advantage. The chroniclers praise his moderation and his love of justice; his mind had been cultivated by literature to a degree then very unusual among princes,—a circumstance which is explained by the fact that he had been intended for an ecclesiastical career, until the death of an elder brother diverted him from it; and his popular manners contrasted favorably with the pride and roughness of Otho. But Otho was the favorite with the great body of the clergy, to whom Philip was obnoxious as the representative of a family which was regarded as opposed to the interests of the hierarchy. Philip was said to have been excommunicated by pope Celestine for invading the property of the Roman church; and Innocent insisted on this, although Philip himself declared that he had never had any knowledge of having incurred such a sentence. The truth seems to be that he had either done so by holding intercourse with his excommunicate brother Henry, or had fallen under some general denunciation against all who should interfere with ecclesiastical property; and, without admitting all that was said against him, he was now desirous of reconciliation with the church. The pope sent the bishop of Sutri, a German by birth, into Germany, with instructions to demand the release of Tancred’s wife and daughters, and of the archbishop of Salerno, who had been carried off as a captive by the late emperor; and he authorized him to absolve Philip on his surrendering these prisoners and swearing to obey the papal judgment as to all the matters for which he had been excommunicated.

But although the release was effected, the bishop incurred his master’s censure by pronouncing the absolution without insisting on the terms which had been prescribed. On the 12th of July, Otho was crowned by the archbishop of Cologne at Aix-la-Chapelle, which he had gained from Philip by winning over the officer who commanded the garrison. He swore to maintain the Roman church, and to relinquish the abuses of his predecessors, especially the jus exuviarum; and a similar oath was taken by the electors who were present. Philip, who, although excluded from Charlemagne’s city, was in possession of the insignia of the kingdom, and was supported by all the great officers of the imperial court, was crowned at Mayence on the 8th of September, and was hailed as the second of his name—the first having been the Arabian Philip, in the middle of the third century, who had come to be erroneously regarded as the earliest Christian emperor. Although the archbishop of Treves, a vacillating man, who had left the party of Otho, was present, he did not venture to deviate from the tradition in favor of Aix by performing the coronation, and the archbishop of Tarentaise officiated; for which he was cited to answer by the pope. The bishop of Sutri was also present, and in punishment of this and of his other offences, was deposed and was banished to a monastery in an island, where he soon after died.

Innocent, even if he had not wished to interfere, was called on to do so by applications from both parties. The king of England sent an embassy to him in behalf of Otho, who himself wrote to him, making great offers of privileges for the churchy and Philip Augustus of France exerted his interest for Philip. The pope wrote to the princes of Germany, telling them that Philip’s coronation was invalid. It had not been performed at the right place or by the right person; his absolution had been pronounced without regard to the conditions prescribed, and was therefore null; he had been crowned while excommunicate, so that the oaths to him were of no force; to have him for king would be to forfeit the right of election, and to admit that the kingdom was hereditary. To Philip’s envoys he addressed a warning from Scripture and history, that the empire had no chance of success in opposition to the priesthood; but he added that he would consider of the question; and he drew up a formal statement of the case under the title of a “Deliberation on the Three Elect”. In this paper, after laying down (as he had already done in his speech to the envoys) that to the papacy belongs “principally and finally” the disposal of the empire—inasmuch as by the pope it had been transferred from the Greeks to the West, and it was the pope who bestowed the crown—he discussed successively the claims of Frederick, Philip, and Otho. In favor of Frederick were the oath which the princes had taken to him during his father’s life, and his connection with the pope as his guardian. Innocent, however, pronounces the oath to be invalid, inasmuch as it was taken when Frederick was an infant and unbaptized, and because the unforeseen death of his father had occasioned the necessity of choosing another king at a time when Frederick was unfit to perform the duties of the office. The papal guardianship he declares to relate to the kingdom of Sicily only, not to the empire; and he points out the inconveniences which would result from the union of the Sicilian kingdom with the imperial dignity. As to Philip it is admitted that he had been elected by a greater number than Otho; but numbers, it is said, are not the only thing to be regarded; and the objections to Philip are insisted on—his excommunication, the irregularity of the absolution pronounced by the bishop of Sutri, his alleged connection with Markwald and Diephold, the offences of his family against the church, the danger of appearing to substitute the principle of hereditary right for that of election. And the judgment concludes in favor of Otho, as having been chosen by the more judicious, if not the larger, party, as descended on both sides from ancestors devoted to the church, and in himself possessing the qualities requisite for the empire. The pope is said to have declared that either he must take the crown from Philip, or Philip must take from him the ensigns of apostolical dignity.

War immediately broke out along the Rhine, and for ten years it was carried on with extraordinary ferocity—the Bohemians, as in former wars, being branded as guilty of atrocities surpassing those of the Germans. Among the disastrous effects of this war on religion, it is noted that in the choice of bishops regard was chiefly had to their martial qualities, and that this contributed greatly to swell the general disorder of the German church.

From both the contending parties Innocent received frequent applications for his support. Conrad, archbishop of Mayence and primate of Germany, who had been engaged in the crusade during the earlier proceedings, in returning from the Holy Land in 1199, had frequent interviews with the pope, who entreated him to use the influence of his high dignity, his age, his great experience, and his revered character, for the reestablishment of peace. But the archbishop, on reaching his own country, found the undertaking beyond his power, and withdrew into Hungary, where he attempted to mediate between two rival claimants of the Hungarian crown. In returning from this mission, Conrad died at Passau, in October 1200, leaving his see to become the object of a contest between representatives of the parties of Philip and Otho. The anti-papal candidate, Leopold, bishop of Worms, a man of resolute character, who had taken part in the affairs of Italy both as a negotiator and as a warrior, is said to have gone so far as to retaliate the pope’s excommunication of him by pronouncing with all the most solemn forms an anathema against Innocent himself. Of the other great Rhenish prelates, John of Treves continued to waver from one party to the other, while Adolphus of Cologne, the chief author of Otho’s elevation, forsook his interest, and in November 1204 did homage to Philip. The pope threatened him, and appointed in his stead another archbishop, who for a time got possession of Cologne, and was supported by the citizens. It was remarkable that, of the German bishops, many sided with what was supposed to be the national cause, notwithstanding the terrors of spiritual censure; while the abbots, from their greater dependence on Rome, were generally in favor of Otho. Everywhere there were contests for churches, and appeals to Rome for a decision between rivals; and it is said that, in consequence of the dissensions which prevailed, many members of monastic societies fell away from the communion of the church.

In 1201 legates were sent into Germany, carrying with them the “Deliberation on the Three Elect”, as their instructions. It would seem that, from whatever reason, their intercourse was almost wholly with Otho’s party, and that they listened to its representations exclusively. They published the pope’s judgment at Cologne, declared Otho to be king and “semper Augustus”, and reported to their master that Otho had almost all Germany with him, that he had 100,000 men ready to take the field, while Philip was reduced so low that he could not venture to show himself.

The pope wrote letters in all directions, zealously recommending the cause of Otho; but, although he was careful to enforce his lofty hierarchical doctrines by considerations of temporal advantage, his exertions had but little success. Richard of England, who had warmly supported Otho, was succeeded in 1199 by John, and Innocent repeatedly urged the new king to give his nephew effectual assistance. But John was indifferent in the matter; in 1200 he concluded a treaty with France, by which he swore to refrain from helping Otho; and he even alleged this treaty as a reason for withholding payment of a legacy which Richard had bequeathed to his nephew. The pope annulled the oath; but it was with difficulty that he persuaded John to pay even a portion of the legacy; and, although Otho received some money from England in 1202, it was either too little or too late to be availing. To Philip Augustus, Innocent urged the dangers which might be apprehended from the union of Sicily with Germany, as a reason for opposing the Swabian house; but he found that the French king was more powerfully swayed by his jealousy of England, which inclined him to make common cause with Philip against Otho. He endeavored to secure Ottocar of Bohemia to the cause of Otho, by confirming the royal title which he had received from Philip, and by favorably entertaining a proposal to erect a metropolitical see, so as to render the Bohemian church independent of the primate of Mayence. He reminded the Lombards of the ancient enmity between them and the Hohenstaufen family. He urged again and again on the princes and prelates of Germany the misdeeds of the Swabian house, the personal demerits of Philip, the danger of allowing the principle of inheritance to supersede their electoral rights, while he disclaimed for himself all wish to interfere with these rights, or to overrule their decision; it is not, he said, the man that is to be provided with an empire, but the empire that is to be provided with a man worthy to govern it. He declared all oaths which had been taken to Philip to be null and void; and he showered privileges and immunities of all sorts on the bishops and the monastic societies who espoused the party of Otho. Yet, notwithstanding the pope’s strenuous opposition, Philip’s strength increased from year to year. His arms prevailed in the held, and he was able to gain some of his rival’s chief partisans—such as Adolphus of Cologne, king Ottocar, and Henry, duke of Lorraine and Brabant—so that at length Otho had hardly any other support than that of the people of Cologne; and even this city, the most important in Germany, which had been long the great mart of northern commerce, and had lately acquired a new religious significance through the possession of the relics of the holy Three Kings, was compelled to forsake Otho’s party for that of Philip, in October 1206. In order that the defects of form in his earlier election might be remedied, Philip in 1205 resigned the crown at Aix-la-Chapelle, in the presence of a great assemblage of princes; he was enthusiastically reelected, and was crowned in Charlemagne’s minster by his new adherent Adolphus of Cologne.

Each of the rivals from time to time endeavored to propitiate the pope by large offers of concession as to the subjects which had been disputed between the ecclesiastical and the secular powers—the election of bishops and abbots, the jus exuviarum, and the like; by promising to employ the secular authority for the enforcement of ecclesiastical and monastic discipline, and for the protection of the church’s property. Philip offered to submit to the judgment of the Roman church in all points as to which he might have offended; to restore all that his predecessors or himself had taken from the church; to assume the cross, and to use the influence of his connection with the imperial family of Constantinople for the subjection of the Greek church to Rome.

The course of events in Germany told even on Innocent’s resolution. In August 1207, his legates were commissioned to absolve Philip, although without any acknowledgment of his title as king, and to endeavor to procure a peace, or at least a truce for two years. The absolution was pronounced at Worms, while Philip agreed to give up Bruno, the papal archbishop of Cologne, who was his prisoner, to admit Siegfried as archbishop of Mayence, and to send the antipapal claimant of that see, Leopold, with Adolphus of Cologne, to the pope for his judgment. It seemed that Innocent, in despair of Otho’s success, was about to abandon his cause; even a matrimonial connection between the pope’s family and that of Hohenstaufen was projected. But on the 21st of June 1208, Philip was assassinated at the castle of Altenberg, near Bamberg, by Otho of Wittelsbach, count palatine of Bavaria, in revenge, as was supposed, for having retracted a promise of giving him his daughter Beatrice in marriage. The news of this crime—which excited general horror, and made the perpetrator an outcast until, some months later, he was discovered in a stable and slain by one of his victim’s officers—overtook the legates on their return from Germany; and Innocent hastened to write to the German princes, charging them to acquiesce in the manifest declaration of Divine Providence in favor of Otho, by refraining from all opposition to him. He exhorted Otho to moderation and conciliation, and for a time this advice was followed. Philip had left no son, and the only male representative of the Hohenstaufen family was the young Frederick of Sicily. On both sides there was an ardent desire for peace after the troubles which for ten years had desolated Germany; and a proposal that Otho should marry the daughter of his rival, which had in vain been urged on Philip, was now renewed with better success. In a great assembly at Frankfort, on St. Martin’s day, Otho was invested with the diadem and the holy lance; and the princess Beatrice, a child of twelve years of age, was led in by the bishop of Spires, who in her name demanded punishment of her father’s murderers. She avowed her consent to the proposed marriage, and the canonical objections, which existed in this as in most other cases of princely marriages, were overruled by the pope’s dispensation, on condition that Otho should rule with justice, should protect widows and orphans, monasteries, and the church, and should go in person on the crusade. In March 1209, Otho executed at Spires a document by which he renewed his promises to the pope as to the freedom of appeals and elections, the property of deceased bishops, and respect for the rights of the church, and engaged himself to give effectual aid for the extirpation of heresy, and to assist the pope in recovering all the territory which rightfully belonged to the see of Rome. The betrothal with Beatrice was celebrated at Wurzburg on the octave of Pentecost; and in the middle of July Otho set out, with an imposing train of nobles and prelates, at the head of a powerful army, to receive the imperial crown.

In the north of Italy, the feuds of the imperialists and the papalists had raged with great fury. Not only was city opposed to city, but each city was distracted between the two embittered factions—Guelfs and Ghibellines, as they were now called—which divided every class of society, and were outwardly distinguished from each other not only by varieties of dress, but even by the architecture of their houses, and by differences in the minutest habits of life. Some of the cities which had achieved independence, had already fallen under the dominion of lords or tyrants. The first of these was Azzo, marquis of Este, who was chosen by Ferrara, and other nobles after his example made themselves masters of towns in their neighbourhood. Otho, in his progress southward, found much to do in endeavoring to reconcile the enmities of the Italians. The statement of some writers, that he received the Lombard crown either at Milan or at Monza, appears to be mistaken; indeed, it is very questionable whether he even visited Milan at this time. After a succession of festive receptions at Bologna and other cities, he was met by the pope at Viterbo; on the 4th of October, he was crowned as emperor by the hands of Innocent in St. Peter’s at Rome, renewing by an oath the promises which he had subscribed at Spires; and for the first and last time an emperor professed to hold his dignity “by the grace of God and the apostolic see”. But hardly was the ceremony completed by which Innocent raised to the temporal headship of Christendom a prince of his own choice, when differences began to show themselves. Otho, hitherto so profuse of offers and promises, now felt himself in a new position, and bound to maintain the prerogatives of his crown against the encroachments of the spiritual power. He was assured by jurists that such promises as he had made to the pope in ignorance were not binding; and perhaps a knowledge of Innocent’s late negotiations with Philip may have set his mind at ease as to any obligations of gratitude.

Immediately after the coronation, the quarrels which had become customary on such occasions were renewed between the Romans and the emperor’s troops, and many of the Germans were slain. Otho demanded compensation for his loss in men and horses, and on the pope’s refusal, retired from the city; but, on being requested to withdraw his troops from the neighborhood, he declared that he would remain until they should have exhausted its provisions. He refused to pay the donative which the Romans claimed at imperial coronations, and enriched himself by the plunder of pilgrims whom his soldiery intercepted on their way to Rome. He seized on some towns and fortresses which the pope had occupied during the vacancy of the empire, and which partly belonged to the inheritance of the countess Matilda; and when Innocent remonstrated, and reminded him of his oath to respect the property of the church, he replied that he had also taken an oath, imposed by the pope himself, to maintain the rights of his crown; that, while he owned the authority of the pope in spiritual things, he was himself supreme in the affairs of this world. After having spent about twelve months in Tuscany and Lombardy, Otho, in November 1210, proceeded into Apulia, where he received the adhesion of Diephold, and invested him anew in the duchy of Spoleto. On this invasion of a territory which was under the special guardianship of the apostolic see, Innocent issued a sentence of anathema against the emperor and his adherents, interdicted the clergy of Capua for having celebrated divine offices in his presence, and declared his subjects to be released from the duty of obedience; and, after having made fruitless attempts by the offer of large concessions to reconcile Otho and Frederick—for which purpose the abbot of Morimond visited the emperor five times in his winter quarters at Capua—he renewed the anathema on Maundy Thursday 1212. Innocent took active measures to make this sentence generally known, and to stir up against Otho those whom he had formerly labored to enlist in his favor, and, in allusion to the disappointment of his policy, he quoted the text—“It repenteth me that I have made man on the earth”.

Otho was recalled from his career of success in Italy by tidings of serious disturbances in Germany, which he endeavored to quell by arms and by negotiation. On the 7th of August 1212, his marriage with the daughter of his late rival was celebrated at Nordhausen; but within four days Beatrice suddenly died. Her death was popularly ascribed to poison, supposed to have been administered by one of the mistresses whom the emperor had brought with him from Italy; and the result was disastrous for Otho. The feelings of attachment to the Swabian house, which he had hoped to secure for himself by his late marriage, were now centered on the undoubted and only heir of the Hohenstaufens, Frederick of Sicily, who was already on his way to claim the German kingdom. Otho had made himself unpopular by his pride, by the roughness of his manners, by his illiberality as to money, which was unfavorably compared with the remembrances of Philip’s generosity, and by the heavy taxation which he found it necessary to lay on his subjects The great prelates,—among them Adolphus of Cologne, whom Innocent, in disgust at Otho, now allowed to resume his see, had turned against him, and had been followed by the clergy in general, who were offended by the rudeness with which he treated the highest members of the hierarchy, and by his proposing to reduce their state and their revenues; and some of the chief personages who had by turns sided with both parties in the late contest, such as the king of Bohemia and the duke of Austria, with many of those who were specially attached to the imperial service, had joined the movement of opposition. Otho was declared by the princes to have forfeited the empire, and in the end of 1211 envoys were sent in their name to invite Frederick to Germany.

BATTLE OF BOUVINES.

To the pope the election of Frederick could not be altogether pleasing. He was yet but a boy of sixteen; his claims were founded on that principle of inheritance which Innocent had always striven to exclude from the election; he was the representative of a family which the pope had continually denounced, and already he had shown symptoms of having inherited the traditions and the feelings of his race. But no other policy than that of supporting Frederick seemed possible; and Innocent gave his approval of the choice. By Frederick himself the invitation of the Germans was eagerly welcomed. The promptings of ambition, the desire to emulate the renown of his forefathers, to find a wider scene for himself than the kingdom of the Sicilian Normans, prevailed over the advice of his southern counsellors and the entreaties of his wife; and, having seen his infant son Henry crowned as his successor, he set out from Palermo on his bold enterprise on Palm Sunday 1212. In April he arrived at Rome, where he had frequent conferences with the pope, and received from him a large supply of money. He then proceeded by sea to Genoa, where he remained nearly three months; and, as the Alpine passes were in the hands of Otho’s partisans, he made his way across the north of Italy to Trent, under the escort of cities which were friendly to him, and not without occasional danger from those of the opposite party, such as Milan and Piacenza. From Trent, with a handful of companions, he crossed the mountains to the great monastery of St. Gall, where the abbot received him with honor, and secured to his interest the wavering bishop of Constance. On reaching that city, he was informed that Otho was at hand, and that his culinary train was already within the walls; but the emperor, on arriving three hours later, found that the gates were shut against him, and that the citizens had declared for his rival. As Frederick proceeded down the Rhine, accessions of strength continually poured in on him, and the general disposition in his favor was increased by his popular manners and by his bountiful largesses. On the 12th of November, he was met at Vaucouleurs in Lorraine by the dauphin, Lewis, who in the name of his father, Philip Augustus, assured him of support; and a week later a formal alliance with the French king was concluded at Toul. In the meantime Otho was so deeply engaged in a war with France, that he was unable to check the progress of Frederick. At the great battle of Bouvines, near Tournay, on the 27th of July 1214, Philip Augustus was victorious over Otho and his allies; and for the remaining five years of his life the emperor was forced to confine himself within his hereditary territory of Brunswick. On St. July 25, James’s day in the following year, Frederick received the German crown at Aix-la-Chapelle, from the primate Siegfried of Mayence; and, in the enthusiasm of the moment, he, with many others, took the badge of the crusade, to which he afterwards more fully pledged himself by oath at Nuremberg, in the presence of a Roman legate.

The ambition to emulate the fame of Frederick Barbarossa and his other ancestors prevailed over the advice of counsellors who represented to the young prince that the difficulties of Germany required his presence at home; but the result of the engagements into which he thus rashly entered was such as he little expected. In the same year, the question of the empire was considered in the great council of the Lateran, and the pope, after having once adjourned the meeting on account of the heat of the discussion, pronounced in favor of Frederick.

On the other hand, Frederick repaid the pope for his support by large promises in favor of the hierarchy and of the Roman see. In July 1213, he pledged himself at Eger, in Bohemia, in the very words of the oath which Otho had taken and had broken, to allow freedom of elections and appeals, to renounce the jus exuviarum, to labor for the suppression of heresy, and to do all that might be in his power towards recovering for the papacy all the territories which it claimed tinder the donation of Matilda or otherwise. In May 1216, he granted fresh immunities to the church, and in the same year he executed at Strasburg an act by which he promised that, on his coronation as emperor, his son Henry should be emancipated from the paternal control, and should alone hold the kingdom of Sicily, both beyond and within the Strait, under the Roman church; that during his minority, he should be under the care of a governor responsible to the pope; and that the Sicilian kingdom should always be separate from the empire.

4

PHILIP AUGUSTUS AND INGEBURGA.

With Philip Augustus of France Innocent was drawn into a contest which lasted many years. In this contest the pope appeared as the protector of innocence against wrong; nor is there any reason for supposing that he was influenced by a mixture of lower motives, although his conduct was marked by much of the assumption which had become characteristic of the papacy. Philip, an able, ambitious, prudent, and unscrupulous prince, under whose reign the kingdom of France was doubled in extent, and the power of the crown was much strengthened as against that of the great feudatories, had lost his first wife while preparing to set out on the crusade in 1190. On his return from the East, he was attracted by the fame of the beauty and virtues of Ingeburga, sister of the king of Denmark, a country which at that time had much intercourse with France, as appears from the fact that in the University of Paris there was a special college for Danish students. It is said that, on being sounded by the Danish king as to his expectations of dowry, Philip answered by asking for a transfer of the claims on the crown of England which Denmark had derived from the great Canute, with a year’s service of a Danish fleet and army for the assertion of them; but that Canute VI, from unwillingness to involve himself in a war with the formidable Richard of England, preferred to portion his sister in money. In 1193 the princess was conducted to Amiens, and her marriage with Philip was celebrated on the day of her arrival. Next day the royal pair were crowned; but during the ceremony Philip was observed to look pale and to tremble. It was found that since the preceding day he had conceived an unconquerable aversion for Ingeburga, which, as the real cause of it was not disclosed, was popularly ascribed to sorcery. The Danish nobles who had escorted the queen refused to take her back to her native country, and she herself was determined to remain in France. Philip knew, by the experience of some of his predecessors, that he could not hope for peace unless a divorce could be obtained in regular form. The usual objection of relationship within the forbidden degrees between Ingeburga and his former wife was therefore set up against the marriage; and a council at Compiegne, composed of bishops devoted to the king, pronounced for a separation on this ground. Ingeburga, who was present, was filled with astonishment and grief when the sentence was explained to her. In her scanty knowledge of French, she could only give notice of an appeal by crying out—“Wicked France! Rome! Rome!” and the suit was earnestly urged by her brother on Celestine III. The pope declared the sentence of the late council to be annulled by apostolical authority, reproved the French bishops for the part which they had taken in the matter, and charged them to prevent the king from contracting another marriage. But it was in vain that he desired Philip to restore his queen to her rights. Ingeburgawas shut up in a convent at Beaurepaire, in the diocese of Arras, where her piety and gentleness won the respect of all who approached her; and Philip, after having met with refusals in other quarters, married Agnes, the beautiful daughter of the duke of Merania, who ruled over a large territory in Istria, the Tyrol, and Bohemia.

The aged Celestine’s interest in the matter appears to have cooled, and no decided step was taken during the remainder of his pontificate. But Innocent, on succeeding him, took up the question with characteristic vigor. Even before his consecration, he wrote to the bishop of Paris, desiring him to admonish the king to put away Agnes and to restore Ingeburga; he soon after addressed to Philip himself a letter in which arguments of all sorts were enforced by threats of the heaviest ecclesiastical penalties; and he sent Peter, cardinal of St. Mary in the Via Lata, as legate into France, with authority, in case of the king’s obstinacy, to lay his dominions under an interdict. The legate held a council at Dijon, from which the king, by his representatives, appealed to Rome; and the legate—(“not out of deference to the appeal, but that he might find a more convenient time and place for fulfilling his commission”)—put off the sentence to another council, which he held at Vienne, then within the imperial territory. There the interdict was proclaimed, and, as the king showed no sign of repentance, it was generally published by the bishops in the beginning of February 1200. Some bishops who at first refused, were compelled by the pope to carry out his orders, although a few still continued to celebrate the offices of religion as usual.

The innocent—such was the theory of the interdict— were to suffer for the guilty sovereign, in order that his heart might be softened either by pity for their misery, or by fear of their discontent. And the sentence of general interdict was one which had never before been felt in France; for that against Robert and Bertha had been limited to their persons, and that against Philip I and Bertrada had been of force only in the places where the sinful pair should be found. The misery now inflicted was extreme. “Awful and wonderful it was”, says Ralph of Coggeshalle, “to see in every city the doors of the churches locked, Christians debarred like dogs from entering them, a cessation of divine offices, no consecration of the sacraments of the Lord’s body and blood, no flocking of the people, as had been usual, to the high solemnities of the saints, the bodies of the dead not committed to burial with Christian rites; but the stench of them infected the air, while the frightful sight of them struck horror into the minds of the living”.

For a time Philip met the interdict with defiance. He expelled from their sees some of the bishops who had published it, and reproached them with their indifference to the sufferings of the people. Instead of restoring Ingeburga, he removed her to the castle of Etampes, where she was treated with greater severity than before; and he declared himself ready to turn Mussulman, and professed to envy Saladin for having no pope to annoy him. But after a time the fear of personal excommunication induced him to send envoys to Rome; and there were circumstances which tended to procure for them a favorable hearing. Bishops who had not shrunk from a conflict with the secular power began to fear that their people might learn to despise the ordinances of religion which were denied to them, and might thus fall a prey to heresy; Innocent himself, too, had reason to foresee a contest with England, and was thus disposed to conciliate the king of France. Cardinal Octavian, of Ostia, was therefore sent into France, with orders to require that Philip should receive Ingeburga as queen, should send Agnes out of his dominions, and should make compensation to the clergy for the damages which they had suffered; if the king should wish to impugn the validity of his marriage with the Danish princess, he must begin the proceedings within six months. The legate had an interview with Philip at Sens, where he reproved him for his misdeeds, and Philip with tears promised to obey the pope’s commands. The king and queen afterwards met in Octavian’s presence; Ingeburga was treated with royal pomp, and was publicly displayed as queen; and on this the interdict was taken off, after having weighed on the people of France for upwards of seven months, and the bishops who had been suspended for refusing to publish it were released from their suspension, on swearing to go to Rome and to obey the pope’s commands.

But although Philip complained to the pope that Octavian had dealt hardly with him, the cardinal had contented himself with receiving promises which were not to be performed. Ingeburga was again sent back to her prison-like seclusion at Etampes, until the question of the marriage should be tried before Octavian and another legate. For this purpose a council was held at Soissons in Lent 1201. The king’s lawyers began by arguing the objection on the ground of affinity; but the advocates who had been sent from Denmark for the queen’s cause appealed to the pope, on the ground that Philip had not treated her as his nobles had sworn for him that he would treat her, and also because Octavian, as being related to the king, and for other reasons, was suspected of partiality in the case. The legate desired them to wait for the arrival of his colleague, cardinal John of St. Paul; but they refused and withdrew. Ingeburga was left alone and friendless; but after a discussion of several days, in which Philip’s counsel exhausted the resources of their learning, an unknown clerk stood forward, and, having asked leave to speak in the queen’s behalf, argued her cause with a skill and a power which extorted admiration even from the king himself. Philip saw that the judgment of the council, which cardinal John was about to pronounce, would be against him, and resolved to prevent such a result. He announced his intention to treat Ingeburga as a wife and a queen; and, proceeding to the convent where she lodged, after a long interview with her, he placed her behind him on his horse and carried her away. On being informed of this, the council broke up. But when Philip’s object had been gained by averting a sentence, the unfortunate Ingeburga was again removed to the castle of Etampes, where she was treated with increased rigour.

Agnes of Merania, while the interdict was in force, had implored the pope to let her enjoy the society of Philip as a husband; for the crown she declared that she did not care. The French nobles had advised the king to send her out of the country; but it was impossible to act on this advice after the council of Soissons, as she was then far advanced in pregnancy; and she soon after died of grief, having given birth to a son, on whom she bestowed the significant name of Tristan. This child did not long survive his mother; but at the earnest suit of Philip, who represented that the divorce pronounced by the council of Compiegne had led him to think himself free to marry—and perhaps also from motives of policy—Innocent consented to acknowledge the two elder children of Agnes as legitimate, and capable of inheriting after their father. Agnes was buried at Nantes with great splendor, and in memory of her Philip erected and endowed a convent for a hundred and twenty monks.

From time to time Ingeburga addressed to the pope complaints of the treatment which she received, and entreaties that he would interfere in her behalf. It is represented that she was kept in close seclusion, seeing no one except occasionally a priest; that her character was aspersed by slander; that she was denied the opportunity of confessing, and was rarely admitted to the mass; that she was cut off from all communication with her native land, and that even her two Danish chaplains were not allowed to speak with her except in French and in the presence of Frenchmen; that her guards were persons of low condition and of rude behavior; that she was ill supplied with food and clothing, so as to be reduced even to accept charitable gifts for her comfort; that she was denied the use of the bath and of medical attendance; and she prays that any concession which may be wrung from her by such treatment may not be allowed to prejudice her rights. The pope in consequence of these letters often wrote to Philip, exhorting him to fulfill his promises to Ingeburga, or, if he could not love her, at least to show her outward respect. Philip endeavored by various means to procure a divorce; by ascribing his aversion to the influence of magic, by endeavoring to induce Ingeburga to become a nun, or to make such statements as should agree with his own account of their conjugal connection. But the pope steadily adhered to his purpose—exhorting Philip, if he believed himself to be under magical influence, to strive against it by fasting and prayer, and telling him that compliance with his wishes was unlawful and impossible.

At length, in the year 1213—twenty years after the repudiation, and seventeen years after Ingeburga had been committed to seclusion—Philip, after consultation with the cardinal-legate, Robert Curzon, and probably with a view to popular support in his quarrels with England and Flanders—consented to receive her as queen. They lived together until his death in 12233 and Ingeburga founded at Corbeil, where she spent her fourteen years of widowhood, a college of priests in connection with the military order of St. John, for the benefit of her husband’s soul.

5

AFFAIRS OF ENGLAND

The sovereign of England, during all but the first year of Innocent’s pontificate, was one whose character—sensual, faithless, cruel, violent and weak, without religion, but not without superstition—afforded ample opportunities for the encroachment of the papacy on the secular power. John, after having been forgiven by his brother Richard for many offences, had been declared by him his heir, in preference to Arthur, the son of an elder but deceased brother. The crown of England, although limited to one family, had hardly ever since the Norman conquest descended according to the strict rule of inheritance; and it is said that at John’s coronation the archbishop of Canterbury, Hubert Walter, addressed the assembled nobles in words which declared it to depend on election. John had already given general scandal by carrying off the betrothed bride of the count of la Marche, while he himself had another wife living; he was believed to have instigated the murder of his nephew Arthur, or even to have murdered him with his own hand. For this he was cited by Philip Augustus, as suzerain of his continental territories, to answer before the peers of France—a court of fabulous origin, and of which this is the first mention in authentic history. In default of appearing, he was condemned to forfeiture; and, through the disaffection which his vices and his extravagant taxation had excited among his subjects, Philip was enabled to wrest from him within a few months the great inheritance of Rollo. His matrimonial irregularities, although really as criminal as those of Philip Augustus, had passed without censure from the pope. But he had already been involved in serious differences with Innocent on account of his disposal of sees, his taxation of monasteries, and other offences, when a question as to the appointment of a primate brought him into direct collision with the papacy.

On the death of Archbishop Hubert, in 1205, the younger monks of Canterbury hastily assembled by night and elected the sub-prior, Reginald, placed him on the high altar, seated him in the archiepiscopal chair, and sent him off to sue for the pall at Rome, under an obligation to keep his election secret until he should appear in the pope’s own presence. But Reginald’s vanity was too strong for this promise, and immediately on landing in Flanders he proclaimed his new dignity. When this was known in England, the monks—even those who had elected him—became ashamed of their choice, and, in order to disarm the king’s indignation, they applied to him for leave to proceed to a fresh election. John recommended one of his chief counsellors, John de Grey, bishop of Norwich, who was accordingly chosen, invested with the temporalities of the see, and sent to Rome with a statement on the king’s part that he had been unanimously elected, and with a protest against any claims which might be set up in favor of a rival. The bishops of the province, however, who had been disregarded in the affair, sent envoys to assert their customary right to a share in the election; and Innocent saw in these circumstances an opportunity for effectually interfering with the Anglo-Norman system, by which, wherever the choice of bishops might nominally be lodged, it was really in the hands of the sovereign. He therefore disallowed both the elections, denied the claim of the suffragan bishops to a share in the appointment of their metropolitan, and desired that fifteen monks of Christ-church should be sent to Rome by a certain day, as representatives of the convent, to choose on the spot an archbishop of his own nomination. The person whom the pope recommended was Stephen Langton, an Englishman, who had been his fellow-student at Paris, and, after having taught in that university with great distinction, had lately been promoted to the cardinalate of St. Chrysogonus. It was in vain that the representatives of the Canterbury monks urged the necessity of the king’s approval. Innocent peremptorily declared that such was not the case when an election was made at the place of the pope’s own residence; and, with the protest of a single monk, on the part of the king and of his candidate, Langton was elected by the deputies of Christ-church, and was thereupon consecrated by the pope.

JOHN AND STEPHEN LANGTON.

Such an interference with the rights of the national church, in entire disregard of the crown, was wholly new in England, and might reasonably have awakened the king’s resentment. But through the unpopularity and folly of John, the high reputation of Stephen Langton, and the energy with which Innocent carried out his policy, the result was very different from what it might otherwise have been.

On receiving an account of the late proceedings from Innocent, with a request for his approval (although the pope intimated that this was unnecessary), John violently objected to Langton as one who, although by birth an English subject, was personally unknown to him, and had lived among his “public enemies” in France. He reminded the pope that England contributed more to the income of the Roman church than all the other countries north of the Alps; he declared himself resolved to carry through the promotion of the bishop of Norwich, and, in case of the pope’s refusal, to cut off all communication between his dominions and Rome. In the meantime he turned his rage against the monks of Canterbury, whom two of his officers, with the assistance of mercenary soldiers, ejected from their convent; and he seized their lands, together with those belonging to the archbishopric. The monks, however, as had been usual in the case of ecclesiastics driven from England for opposition to the royal will, found an eager welcome abroad, and were entertained at St. Bertin’s and in other foreign monasteries. The pope continued the correspondence for some time. He remarked that John could not well be unacquainted with Langton’s character, inasmuch as he had congratulated him on his advancement to the cardinalate, and, in disregard both of the king’s threats and of the money with which the English envoys were furnished, he bestowed the pall on Langton with his own hands at Viterbo.

Innocent, after some further exchange of letters, empowered the bishops of London, Ely, and Worcester to interdict the kingdom of England, without excepting even the churches of monastic or military orders, if John should obstinately refuse to hearken to the admonitions which they were charged to deliver. On the announcement of this, John burst out in a paroxysm of rage, uttering violent abuse against the pope, with threats against the clergy and all who should bring any message from the Roman court; and he drove the bishops from his presence. The interdict was therefore published in Lent 1208, and John met it by putting his threats into execution. At first, he was disposed to deny the clergy the protection of the laws, so that, when a man was charged with the murder of a priest, the king exclaimed: “He has slain one of my enemies; let him go free”. But he afterwards changed his policy in this respect, and ordered that anyone who should outrage a clerk should be hanged on the nearest oak. A general order was issued for the banishment of all clergymen; and, as many of them would not leave the country, it was directed that their property should be seized, but that enough to sustain life should be allowed them. Severe measures were also taken against the wives or concubines of the clergy. The bishops who had published the interdict fled across the sea, and were followed by all their brethren except those who enjoyed the king’s favor; and a chronicler strongly blames them for leaving their flocks to the wolf, while they themselves lived “in all manner of delights abroad”. At length Peter des Roches, bishop of Winchester, was the only member of his order who remained in England, and he, says a chronicler, remained, not as a defender of the church, but as a minister of the king. The Cistercians at first continued to celebrate their rites, in neglect of the interdict, but were compelled by the pope to refrain; and when, at a later time, some other societies of monks were allowed at the primate’s intercession to celebrate, the Cistercians were punished by exclusion from this favor. It was in vain that the king’s nephews, the duke of Saxony and Otho of Germany, entreated him to make peace with the church; but, although the sufferings of the English during the time of the interdict were great, they were far less severe than the misery which had lately been produced by a like sentence in France. For it was found impossible to enforce the interdict in all its rigor; the nobles, who at other times stoutly opposed the crown, had no wish to see the hierarchy supreme, and even among the clergy there was a strong feeling of nationality. And thus it was that, while the powerful and able Philip Augustus was reduced to submission by an interdict in seven months, the weak, pusillanimous, and unpopular John was able to hold out against the pressure of a like censure for upwards of six years, even although an excommunication of his person was added to the general sentence. In 1209 the bishops of London, Ely, Worcester, and Arras were authorized to pronounce the anathema; but they did not venture into England for the purpose, and John took all possible means to prevent the introduction of letters conveying the sentence, as it was considered that a formal delivery of such a document was necessary to its taking effect. But reports of the excommunication reached England, and were acted on by the more scrupulous of the ecclesiastics who remained in the country. Geoffrey, archdeacon of Norwich, resigned a judgeship in the Exchequer on the ground that he could not serve an excommunicated sovereign; whereupon he was imprisoned, loaded with a leaden cope, and scantily fed; and under these severities he died. Hugh of Wells, a royal chaplain who was much employed in the king’s affairs, having been elected to the bishopric of Lincoln in 1209, obtained leave to go abroad that he might be consecrated by the archbishop of Rouen; but on landing in France, he took his way to Pontigny, where Langton, like his predecessor Becket, had found a refuge, and there he received consecration from the banished primate. In punishment of this, the revenues of Lincoln were confiscated, and the bishop was compelled to remain in exile. In the meantime John endeavored to obtain supplies of money by taxing the monasteries excessively, and the Cistercians, as they were longest spared, had at last to pay heavily in proportion. In 1210 the pope absolved all John’s subjects from their oath of fealty; and it is said that the king, on his part, endeavored to strengthen himself by sending a mission to seek an alliance with the Mahometans of Africa.

In 1212 Langton went to Rome, in company with the bishops of London and Ely, to represent to the pope the crimes of John against the church, and the sufferings which the bishops and clergy had endured. Indignant that his spiritual thunders should have been so long spent without effect, Innocent resolved to employ means of another kind, and the archbishop on his return to France was authorized to pronounce the deposition of John, and to invite Philip Augustus to an invasion of England, promising to all who should take part in this enterprise the privileges of crusaders. Philip eagerly caught at the hope of adding England to the territories which he had already wrested from John; the crusade was resolved on at a national assembly at Soissons, and preparations were made for a speedy and formidable descent on England, while John endeavored to prepare for meeting it by assembling a fleet at Portsmouth, and an army on Barham Downs, near Canterbury. John’s superstitious mind had been much alarmed by a prophecy of one Peter, a hermit of Pontefract or Wakefield, that he would cease to reign before Ascension-day, the anniversary of his coronation; and this prediction, with others of the same person, or feigned in his name, had become generally current, and had produced a strong impression on the people, although Peter, on being questioned by the king, professed himself unable to explain in what manner the fulfillment was to take place. While men’s minds were in general alarm, and while the forces on either side were mustering, Pandulf, a Roman sub-deacon of great experience in affairs, arrived in England, with two knights of the Temple, and had a meeting with the king at Dover. They represented to him the imminent danger in which he was from enemies both abroad and at home, and Pandulf suggested that there was but one way of safety possible—namely, through reconciliation with the church—through resigning the kingdoms of England and Ireland to St. Peter, and consenting to hold them in vassalage, and on condition of a yearly tribute, under the Roman see. To this proposal—not the less degrading because in other kingdoms and in other circumstances some similar tenure had been admitted in consideration of special benefits and privileges—John was fain to consent. He promised to submit to the pope’s judgment as to all the matters which had caused his excommunication; to recall the banished bishops and clergy, and to pay them a compensation for their losses; and on the eve of Ascension-day, at a house of the templars near Dover, he formally yielded up the crowns of England and Ireland, and did homage for his kingdoms to the papal envoy. The Yorkshire hermit’s prophecy was popularly regarded as fulfilled; and whether in acknowledgment or in denial of its truth, John caused Peter and his son to be dragged at the tails of horses from Corfe Castle (where he had imprisoned them) to Wareham, and there to be hanged. The interdict was relaxed, and Pandulf, on his return to France, charged Philip in the pope’s name to refrain from carrying out his designs against England, as the king had become the vassal of St. Peter. Philip indignantly exclaimed against the pope for having lured him by deceitful hopes to incur vast trouble and expense in preparing for the expedition which his representative had now forbidden. In the meantime John summoned his liegemen to attend him on an expedition into Poitou, and, on their hesiting to comply, under the pretext that he was not yet formally absolved, he invited Langton and the other banished bishops to return.   The primate was received with great honor, and on St. Margaret’s day, in Winchester Cathedral, the king swore in his presence to do justice in his courts to all men, keep the ancient laws, (especially those of Edward the Confessor,) to restore all church property, and to compensate the owners for all that they had lost. With a view to the settlement of all remaining difficulties, as well as to the preaching of a crusade and summoning a general council, Nicolas, cardinal-bishop of Tusculum, arrived in England as legate about Michaelmas; and at a council which was held at St. Paul’s in October, John again went through the humiliation of doing homage for his kingdom to the representative of Rome, and paid the first portion of the stipulated tribute.

In the beginning of February 1214, John set out for his campaign in Poitou, where his army met with considerable success. But he was recalled by the tidings of the great victory gained by Philip at Bouvines, where among Otho’s allies was a large force of English under the earl of Salisbury, who himself was struck down and taken prisoner by the martial bishop Philip of Beauvais. On hearing of this defeat, John passionately exclaimed that since his reconciliation with God and the church everything had gone ill with him.

The removal of the interdict was delayed by negotiations as to the indemnity which was to be paid to the clergy. But Innocent was now disposed to take part with his new vassal, and the legate Nicolas disgusted the English clergy by insisting on a compromise which was far short of their demands.  When this had at length been settled, the interdict was formally taken off on St. Peter’s and St. Paul’s day 1214.

The barons of England felt deeply the degradation which John’s abject submission to the pope had inflicted on them and on the whole kingdom; and his long misgovernment, his reckless indulgence in excesses of tyranny and lust, had excited a general desire for the privileges and the control of settled law. It was therefore resolved to insist on the fulfillment of the king’s solemn promise to observe the laws of king Edward; and in this movement the primate took the lead, with the intention of guiding it according to equity and to written right. At a meeting held at St. Paul’s, London, in August 1213, he announced to the assembled nobles that he had found a charter of liberties, granted by Henry I at his coronation, and confirmed by Henry II; and on this it was determined by the bishops and barons that they would take their stand. The spiritual and the lay chiefs swore to support each other in the attempt, and the compact was renewed in a later meeting at Bury St. Edmund’s. It was in vain that the legate Nicolas threw all his influence into the opposite scale; that the king raged, and swore never to consent to a claim of liberties which would reduce him to the condition of a slave; that he tried to detach the bishops from their alliance with the barons by offering entire freedom of election to sees; that he took the cross at the hands of the bishop of London, in order to secure the privileges of a crusader; that he surrounded himself with foreign mercenary soldiers. He found himself deserted by all but the nobles of his court; the barons pressed steadily onwards, possessed themselves of the capital, and on the 15th of June, 1215, extorted from the king at Runnymede the signature of the Great Charter—a document intended to record with unquestionable certainty, and thereby to secure, the rights to which English subjects were already entitled on the ground of earlier laws, with such new provisions as were necessary to counteract new dangers and usurpations. In the first article of this it is declared, with a reference to the king’s spontaneous grant of freedom of election, that the church of England shall be free, and shall have her rights entire and her liberties uninjured.

John reckoned on evading his obligations under the pretext that, as the pope was now suzerain of England, the charter could have no validity without his consent. It is said that Innocent, on hearing of the meeting at Runnymede, burst out into an indignant exclamation, swearing by St. Peter to punish the barons for attempting to dethrone a king who had taken the badge of a crusader, and had placed himself under the protection of the Roman church; and on the 24th of August he issued a bull by which he condemned and annulled the charter, released all men from their obligations to observe it, and severely censured the English primate for the part which he had taken in extorting it from the king. Against Langton, in whom he had expected to find a submissive instrument of Rome, Innocent was especially provoked, not only by his political conduct, but by his opposition to the legate Nicolas, who had thrown himself wholly into the king’s interest, and by claims as to patronage and other matters had frequently come into collision with the ancient privileges of Canterbury. The bishop of Winchester, the abbot of Reading, and Pandulf, who about this time was elected to the see of Norwich, were charged to pronounce an excommunication against all who should oppose the king, and to suspend any prelate who should refuse to publish the sentence. Langton was on the point of setting out for the Lateran council when he received notice from the commissioners that he was suspended by the pope’s commands But, while professing obedience to the papal authority, he declared that the order had been issued on false information, declined to publish it until he should have had an opportunity of conferring with the pope, and proceeded on his way to the council. At that great assembly John had his representatives, who dwelt on the primate’s alleged offences, and the pope declared himself unreservedly for the king. Excommunication was denounced against all who should oppose John; Langton was severely censured by Innocent for having taken part with the barons, and for having disregarded the notice of suspension; and the election of his brother Simon to York was disallowed in favor of the king’s nominee, Walter de Grey, bishop of Worcester. The primate’s suspension was removed in February 1216, but with the condition that he should not return to England until peace should have been concluded between the king and the barons, by a party of whom Lewis, eldest son of the king of France, had been invited into England, as the only means of successfully opposing the foreign mercenaries whom John kept in his pay. Lewis had eagerly embraced the opportunity, in defiance of solemn and repeated warnings and threats from the pope’s legate, Gualo—alleging that John had never been rightful king, that he had been condemned for the murder of his nephew, that he had violated his coronation-oath, that his surrender of the kingdom was void, because unsanctioned by the barons. Philip Augustus, although he professed to take no share in his son’s enterprise, secretly encouraged it, and England was for a time a prey to the ravages of three foreign armies—the French, the Scots, who took the opportunity to break in on the north, and the king's Brabançons, or mercenaries.

In the meantime Innocent endeavored to support John by spiritual denunciations against his chief opponents, and by interdicting the city of London, which took part with the invaders. But these sentences were generally disregarded, and John at his death, on the 16th of October 1216 (three months after that of Innocent), left to a boy only nine years old a kingdom of which the soil was in great part occupied by a foreign invader.

6

AFFAIRS OF HUNGARY, SPAIN, ETC.

In his dealings with the less considerable states of Christendom, Innocent displayed the same lofty conception of his authority, the same vigor and firmness in asserting it, the same skill in finding opportunities for intervention, which we have seen in his policy toward the empire, France, and England. Thus in Hungary he took advantage of a disturbed succession, when, on the death of Bela III, Andrew employed against his brother Emmerich the forces which he had raised as if for a crusade; and the pope, by persuading the rivals to lay down their arms, while he restored peace to the country, established his own spiritual sway.

In the Christian kingdoms of Spain, he benefited by the irregular marriages of sovereigns, which placed them at his mercy for the employment of spiritual punishments, such as interdict and anathema, and compelled them to submit to his decisions. The reigning family of Aragon had risen from being counts of Barcelona to a degree of importance which seemed to warrant the assumption of the royal title; but they had never been crowned, and the young king Peter resolved to seek the papal confirmation of his dignity. In 1204 he received the crown from Innocent’s hands in the church of St. Pancras without the walls of Rome, and then, accompanying the pope to St. Peter’s, he laid his crown and sceptre on the altar. Having thus offered his kingdom to St. Peter, he was reinvested in it by the symbol of the sword, and promised to hold it as a fief of the apostolic see, paying a yearly tribute, and granting entire freedom of election to bishoprics and abbacies, for the disposal of which the consent of the sovereign had until then been necessary. On returning home, Peter found that his concessions to Rome had excited some discontent among his subjects; but the compact was observed, and although Peter himself, as we shall see, was drawn into opposition to the cause which the pope sanctioned in the religious war of southern France, it was not from any want of loyalty to the papacy, but from sympathy with his own relations and allies, for whom he had interceded with Innocent in vain.

Innocent earnestly exerted himself to persuade the Christians of Spain to peace among themselves, and to combination against their Moslem enemies. When a great invasion from Africa, under the miramolin Mahomet el Nazir, was threatened in 1211, he authorized the raising of a crusading force from other countries for the assistance of the Spanish Christians, and instituted solemn prayers at Rome for the success of their arms. In 1212 the invaders were overthrown by the kings of Aragon and Castile, with their allies, in the battle of Navas de Tolosa—a victory which recalls that of Charles Martel at Poitiers by its greatness both in itself and its results, inasmuch as it for ever delivered Europe from the fear of invasion on the side of Africa. In acknowledgment of the pope’s assistance, the victors sent the banner and the lance of the Saracen leader to be hung up in St. Peter’s; and a solemn thanksgiving was there celebrated, in which the king of Castile’s report of the victory was publicly read, and the pope addressed the assembled multitude on the deliverance which had been wrought for Christendom.

In Portugal, in Scotland, in the Scandinavian kingdoms, and in Poland, the vigilance and the vigor of Innocent’s administration made themselves felt, in inculcating the obligations of Christian morality and religion, as well as in asserting the pretensions of the Roman see. In countries where the claims of the Greek church conflicted with those of the Latin, he labored to secure the allegiance of the princes and of their people to St. Peter; but, although he was successful in Dalmatia, and in Bulgaria, where he conferred the title of king on the barbarian prince Joannicius, it was in vain, that he attempted to conciliate the Russians by the offer of a similar dignity, with the power of St. Peter’s sword. “Has your master a weapon like this?” said the Russian prince Roman to the papal envoy, laying his hand on his own sword—“If so, he may dispose of kingdoms and cities; but so long as I carry this on my thigh, I need no other”. And when the overtures were renewed after the Latin conquest of Constantinople, the Russians continued obstinately to hold to the Greek patriarch who had established himself at Nicaea.

With Armenia Innocent was drawn into particular communication by the connection of the crusaders with that country. The differences of doctrine and usages which had divided the churches were smoothed over; the Armenian patriarch accepted a pall from Rome, and promised to appear either in person or by deputy at councils convoked by the pope, and to send a representative to Rome every fifth year.

7

THE CRUSADES

The state of the Latin kingdom in the East engaged the attention of Innocent from the very beginning of his pontificate. The late attempt at a crusade had not only failed of its object, but had thrown discredit on the western nations which had been concerned in it. Even before the Germans had relinquished the expedition, the pope endeavored to stir up fresh volunteers to take their place in fighting the infidels. He attempted, by correspondence with the emperor and with the patriarch, to draw the Greeks of Constantinople into a new enterprise for the common cause of Christendom; and in the last days of the year 1199, he issued letters summoning the west to the deliverance of the Holy Land. He bound himself and the cardinals to give a tenth of their income towards the cost of the expedition; from other ecclesiastics a fortieth at least was required. For the Cistercians and Premonstratensians, the Carthusians, and the order of Grammont, the demand was only a fiftieth; but the Cistercians pleaded the privileges granted by former popes, and it is said that a threatening vision of their patroness, the blessed Virgin, terrified the pope into exempting them from all contribution, except their prayers for the success of the crusade. The old privileges of crusaders were renewed and extended; and this, we are told by Villehardouin, was an inducement which persuaded many to take the cross. But the legates and the preachers who were sent to publish the crusade in various countries, found in general a lack of zeal for the cause. There was a prevailing suspicion that the money contributed for the Holy Land was sometimes detained in the Roman coffers; and Innocent condescended to counteract this suspicion, by announcing that the funds for the new crusade would not pass through his hands—that in every parish a chest with three locks was to be provided for the collection, and that the keys were to be entrusted to the bishop of the diocese, with a knight of the Temple, and one of the Hospital. Among those who enlisted themselves for the crusade there was no prince of the highest rank. In Germany, Philip and Otho were contending for the possession of the imperial crown. The pope’s endeavors to unite the rival kings of France and England in a new expedition to the East had been fruitless; and after the death of Richard, Philip Augustus was engrossed by the interests of his kingdom at home, and by the difficulties which had arisen out of his marriage. The highest in dignity and importance of those who took the cross was Baldwin, count of Flanders and Hainault, whose father, Philip, had died in the Holy Land.

In France, a remarkable excitement was produced by the preaching of an ecclesiastic named Fulk, of Neuilly on the Marne. Fulk had been for years a parish-priest of the ordinary kind, when he became impressed with the desire of something higher and better than the life which until then had satisfied him. Feeling his ignorance, he resorted to the lectures of Peter the Chanter, a famous teacher of Paris and with the knowledge which he thus acquired, a spirit and a fervor altogether new appeared to animate him. His preaching became famous; he eloquently denounced the errors of heretics, the subtleties of dialecticians and decretalists, and reprobated the vices of all classes—especially those of usurers. He reclaimed many women from a life of sin, and either persuaded them to enter into convents, or portioned them for marriage. He sent disciples to preach in various parts of France and in other countries—among them, Eustace of Flai, whose visit to England has been already mentioned. After a time, the power of Fulk’s preaching was reinforced by miracles; he cast out devils, he cured the blind, the dumb, the deaf, and the lame—discovering by a special gift who were likely to receive spiritual benefit from the bodily cures which he bestowed on them; and those who refused to believe were delivered by him to Satan—a sentence which was followed by the vengeance of heaven. Nor were the admonitions of Fulk confined to the multitudes of low condition who flocked around him with such eagerness that sometimes he was even in danger from their pressure; it was he, according to some authorities, who reproved Richard of England for cherishing as his three daughters, pride, covetousness, and luxury; to which the king replied that he bestowed his pride in marriage on the templars, his greed on the Cistercians, and his luxury on the prelates of the church. Yet in the midst of his success Fulk incurred much suspicion by the difference of his habits from the asceticism which was generally affected by such preachers; for he rode on horseback, shaved his hair, and professed no austerity as to clothing or diet. By these suspicions the effect of his sermons was impaired, so that many of his converts fell away; the offence which he had given to many persons seemed to stand in the way of his work; and it would seem that the freshness and energy of his discourse had worn off, when he was commissioned to preach the crusade in the room of Peter the Chanter, who had undertaken the task, but had died, and had bequeathed it to his pupil. For this new object Fulk exerted his eloquence with even more than his former vigor and effect. He presented himself at the general chapter of the Cistercians, where he, with the bishop of Langres and others, solemnly took the cross. At Écry, a castle on the Aisne, he arrived at the time of a great tournament given by the young count Theobald of Champagne, brother of Henry, the late king of Jerusalem; and such was the effect of his fervid words, that the count himself, with most of his guests, took the cross—among them, Walter of Brienne (who, however, afterwards relinquished the crusade for his attempt in southern Italy), Simon de Montfort, who had already been distinguished as a crusader, and Geoffrey of Villehardouin, marshal of Champagne, who eventually became the historian of the expedition.

At meetings which were afterwards held, it was resolved that the surest way to weaken the Mussulman power was by means of an attack on Egypt; and with a view to this, as well as from a remembrance of the disasters which had befallen former expeditions by land, it was resolved to proceed by sea. Villehardouin was therefore dispatched, with five others, to Venice, in order to negotiate for the means of transport.

Venice had by this time become the most important of the Italian trading cities; excelling her rivals Genoa and Pisa, not only in the number of her ships, but in their size and build, and in the boldness, the skill, and the discipline of their crews. She was the great centre of commerce between the East and the West, and had a factory or quarter of her own in all the chief cities of the Levant. The Lateran council of 1179 had forbidden all Christians to supply munitions of war to the Saracens, and Innocent had endeavored to put an end to all commerce with the infidels; but the Venetians represented to him that, as they had no agriculture, a suppression of their traffic would be ruinous to them; and the pope relaxed his order by allowing them for a time to trade with “the kingdoms of Egypt and Babylon” in everything but warlike stores, adding the expression of a hope that this indulgence would render them more zealous to help Jerusalem. The Venetians, although always respectful to the papacy, had been accustomed—perhaps through some influence of their communication with the infidels and the schismatics of the East—to behave with firmness in their dealings with Rome, and had thus achieved for themselves a peculiar amount of spiritual independence. Their relations with Constantinople had been for some time unfriendly; their merchants had been plundered by the emperor Manuel, their settlers had been massacred under Andronicus, and, although Isaac Angelus had restored their privileges, the dethronement of that emperor by Alexius, in 1195, had produced a new and unfavorable turn in the state of affairs.

At Venice, Villehardouin and his companions found a ready hearing. Henry Dandolo, the doge, who, although ninety-four years old, and almost entirely blind, retained all his mental vigor, and even his martial spirit, entered eagerly into the project, and after a solemn mass in St. Mark’s, an agreement was ratified by the acclamations of 10,000 Venetians who were present, and by mutual oaths on the holy Gospels. In consideration of a certain sum, the Venetians were to provide, by the feast of St. John at midsummer 1202, ships and provisions for the transport and maintenance of the crusading force; they were to add at least fifty galleys of their own, and, so long as the partnership should last, any conquests which might be made were to be equally divided between the contracting parties. The pope sanctioned the enterprise, with the significant condition that no attack should be made on any Christian peopled

On returning to France, the envoys found the gallant Theobald of Champagne dangerously sick, and he soon after died, at the age of twenty-five. The command of the expedition was thus left vacant, and, after having been declined by the duke of Burgundy and other princes, it was accepted by Boniface, marquis of Montferrat, and brother of the famous Conrad. Boniface, in consequence of an invitation to France, appeared at an assembly at Soissons, where he was invested with the cross and with a general’s staff by the bishop of the place and Fulk of Neuilly; and at a chapter which the marquis afterwards attended at Citeaux, Fulk was able to declare that he had given the cross to 200,000 men.

At the appointed time, the crusaders appeared in great numbers at Venice, and it was found that the Venetians, in their naval preparations, had more than fulfilled their part of the engagement. But as many of the crusaders, in the hope of finding cheaper terms of passage, had preferred to embark at Marseilles, or at some port of southern Italy, those who assembled at Venice were unable to make up the stipulated sum; and although count Baldwin and other chiefs liberally contributed all that they had with them, including plate and jewels, and even all that they could borrow, a large deficiency still remained. Although the price had been calculated for a much larger number, yet, as it had been promised in one sum, the Venetians were peremptory in requiring full payment before they would consent to sail; and at length, when the fulfillment of this condition was evidently hopeless, the doge proposed to the Venetian council that, instead of insisting on further money, or of using their right to seize as forfeit that which had already been paid, they should persuade the crusaders to join them in an expedition against Zara, in Dalmatia, which had been lately taken from the republic by the king of Hungary. The crusaders were informed that, if this proposal were accepted, the forces of Venice would go with them to the holy war; and at a great assemblage in St. Mark’s, the doge announced from one of the lecterns that he himself, although old, infirm, and needing rest, would gladly take the lead of his countrymen in so glorious an enterprise. His words were received with acclamations of joy, mixed with tears; and Dandolo, descending from the lectern, proceeded to the altar, where, amidst intense excitement of the multitude, he fell on his knees, weeping profusely, and received the cross.

On the 8th of October 1202, a fleet of 480 vessels sailed from the port of Venice, and, after having reduced some of the small islands of the Adriatic to subjection, the crusaders arrived off Zara. A cardinal, whom the pope had sent to accompany the expedition, had returned to his master, on finding himself refused by the Venetians as legate, although they were willing to admit him as a preacher; and on his report Innocent had threatened to anathematize the crusaders if they made war on any Christians. Guy, abbot of Vaux-Cernay, who had accompanied Simon de Montfort, now protested in the pope’s name against attacking a Christian city, belonging to a king who himself had taken the cross. But Dandolo replied that the king of Hungary’s crusading was only a pretense, and it was with difficulty that Simon was able to save the zealous abbot from the fury of the Venetians. On Martinmas day, siege was laid to Zara, and on the sixth day the defenders, after having in vain appealed to the sympathy of the crusaders by displaying crosses and sacred pictures from the walls, were forced to surrender. The expedition was now joined by the marquis of Montferrat, who had been unable to accompany it at the outset; but it was weakened by the departure of Simon de Montfort and others, who had taken no part in the assault on Zara.

During the winter, which was spent at Zara, some serious conflicts took place between the French and Venetians, and negotiations were actively carried on with the pope. Innocent, after having severely reproved and excommunicated the crusaders for their transgression of his orders, was at length persuaded to accept their professions of repentance, and to absolve them, charging them to restore Zara to the king of Hungary, and to undertake no further expedition against Christians, but to go on to the Holy Land.

But a new object was now suggested for their enterprise, and was rendered the more attractive by the necessities into which a great part of them had by this time fallen. Alexius, son of the dethroned emperor Isaac Angelus of Constantinople, and brother-in-law of Philip of Swabia, had entreated their leaders while at Venice to help in the recovery of his father’s throne. His first application had been fruitless, and he had been unable to obtain any decided answer from the pope. But at Zara the crusaders received envoys from Philip, who recommended the cause of his Byzantine connections, and held forth on the part of the young Alexius tempting offers of money and of cooperation towards their great object, with the hope of reunion between the Greek and the Latin churches, if they would turn aside for a short time to restore the rightful emperor to the throne of Constantinople. Innocent again remonstrated through his representatives, and there was much division of opinion among the crusaders. The French were inclined to obey the pope, but the keen Venetians, who were animated not only by the desire of gain, but by the feeling of national and even personal enmity, were for closing with the new proposal, and prevailed.

About the middle of May 1203, forty thousand men sailed from Zara, and, after having spent three weeks at Corfu, they came in sight of Constantinople on St. John’s eve. “Much”, says Villehardouin, “did those look at Constantinople who had never before seen it; for they could never have believed that in all the world there could be a city so rich and so beautiful; when they saw its high walls, and the fair towers wherewith it was surrounded on all sides, and its sumptuous palaces and its lofty churches, whereof there were so many as no man could believe unless he beheld it with his own eyes, and the length and breadth of the city which was mistress of all others. No one was there among them so bold but that his heart beat; and no wonder, for never since the world began was so great an enterprise undertaken by a like number of people”. The usurper, in his devotion to his pleasures, had neglected to prepare against invasion, and the Greeks looked on with stolid or affected contempt while the western armament passed along the quays, with Alexius the son of Isaac conspicuously placed on the stern of one of the ships as the rightful heir of the empire. On the 6th of July the grand assault was made; the tower of Galata, which commanded the harbor, was taken, and the chain which stretched across the Golden Horn was burst by the force of a Venetian ship driven against it with the sails swollen by a strong wind. Dandolo appeared in the prow of the foremost vessel, with the banner of St. Mark displayed before him, and, after having been the first to land, exposed himself gallantly while he cheered on his men to the fight. The usurper Alexius, after having been roused with difficulty to show himself at the head of his troops, who were tenfold as many as the assailants, deserted them. It was in vain that the “axe-bearing barbarians” (as a Greek historian styles them)—the English and Danes of the Varangian guard—fought manfully, and that the Genoese and the Pisan settlers exerted themselves in defense of the privileges which they had acquired in preference to the Venetians. Alexius ran off the following night; the blinded Isaac was brought forth from his prison, hastily arrayed in imperial robes, placed in a chair of state, and surrounded with the magnificence of a court, that he might give audience to Villehardouin and another noble Frank, who appeared as envoys from the crusaders, to offer him the restoration of his crown on condition of his ratifying the terms of their compact with his son. On hearing the statement of these terms, Isaac declared that he felt them to be heavy and difficult, but that no recompense could be too great for the allies to whom he owed his deliverance; he swore to the compact, sealed it, and was then allowed to embrace his son. On the feast of St. Peter’s chains, Isaac was again enthroned with great pomp, in St. Sophia’s, and the young Alexius was anointed as his colleague in the empire.

The crusaders were now desirous to go on; but the young emperor entreated them to remain at Constantinople until the following Easter, for the purpose of securing his father’s throne, as the Greeks were not to be trusted; and the offers of further benefits which accompanied the proposal prevailed on them, although not until after some opposition had been manifested. The payment of the stipulated money to the allies was begun by installments; but while the Greeks complained that in order to this they were heavily taxed, and that churches were stripped of their precious ornaments, the Latins cried out that the payments were irregular, scanty, and continually diminishing, until at length they ceased altogether. Other causes of quarrel speedily appeared. The reconciliation of the Greek and Latin churches, which Innocent in the beginning of his pontificate had urged on the late emperor and on the patriarch, and to which Isaac and his son had pledged themselves, was hindered by the assumption of the Latins, and by the bigoted prejudices of both parties. The Greeks saw with disgust that Alexius degraded the crown by familiarly associating with the Franks, conforming to their manners, and playing at dice in their tents; the Latins complained that the emperors were estranged from them, and that their services were requited with ingratitude. While Alexius and the marquis of Montferrat were engaged in an expedition to reduce the country to subjection and order, a serious affray took place in consequence of an attack which was made on the Mahometan mosque by some Flemings, Pisans, and Venetians. In the defense of their building, the Mussulmans were assisted by the Greeks; the mosque was set on fire, and a conflagration ensued, which raged for two days, and is said to have destroyed a fourth part of the city. By this calamity the hatred of the Greeks against the Latins was further exasperated; continual skirmishes took place, and an attempt was made to burn the crusading fleet. A deputation from the crusaders, of which Villehardouin was a member, waited on the emperors, to reproach them with their ingratitude, and insist on the fulfillment of their promises, with a threat that otherwise the Latins would hold themselves released from their own engagements. Jealousies arose between the elder and the younger emperors, and Isaac, whose misfortunes might have bespoken pity, made himself hated by his vices, and ridiculous by his belief in the flatteries of monks and astrologers, who lived luxuriously at his expense, and repaid him by promising the recovery of his sight and vigor. An attempt to set up one Nicolas Cannabus as emperor proved futile; but soon after this a more dangerous design was matured and executed by Alexius Ducas, a prince of the blood, who, from the meeting of his bushy eyebrows, was commonly called Murzuflus. Having failed to draw the Latins into a scheme for the dethronement of the princes whom their arms had restored, Murzuflus decoyed Alexius into a prison, where it is believed that the young emperor was murdered, although the usurper pretended that his death was natural, and honored him with a costly funeral; and Isaac soon after died of grief.

By these unexpected events all terms of peace were necessarily brought to an end, and the Latins, after some fruitless negotiation, and many slight encounters both by sea and land, resolved to take possession of Constantinople for themselves. Their first assault was repulsed with heavy loss; but three days later they again made an attempt; Murzuflus, after calling all the holiest relics to his assistance, and after having vigorously withstood the enemy for a time, was driven to flight, and the imperial city fell into their hands. A great slaughter followed; but the cruelties which were inflicted on the Greeks were not so much the work of the crusaders as of the Latin settlers, who had lately been plundered and driven out of the city to seek a refuge in the camp of the besiegers. In the wildness of their triumph acts of profanity were committed by the crusaders, which not only revolted the feelings of the Greeks, but drew down the indignant reproof of the pope. Pictures of the Redeemer and of the saints were torn from the walls of churches, and were scattered on the ground or used as seats and benches; sacred relics were thrown into filthy places, and the consecrated host was trodden under foot; hallowed vessels were used as plates and drinking-cups; the imperial tombs—among them that of the great Justinian—were violated and rifled; the splendid ornaments of St. Sophia’s and other churches were stripped off and sold to pedlars; a prostitute was seated on the patriarchal throne, and indecent songs and dances were performed around her. No wonder that the historian Nicetas, who himself was a sufferer by the capture of Constantinople, apostrophizes the crusaders as to the inconsistency of such things with their profession, or that he holds up by way of contrast the humane and decent conduct of the Saracens on getting possession of Jerusalem.

The spoil of Constantinople was of immense value, but much that was precious perished. Bronze statues, the masterpieces of ancient art, were melted down for coinage. The Venetians alone among the conquerors had an eye for art; and thus, while others carried home with delight such treasures as Jacob’s stone pillow, fragments of the true cross, one of the heads of St. John the Baptist, which forms the glory of Amiens cathedral, and other relics of holy personages, from those of Scripture down to the martyrs and confessors of the iconoclastic controversy, the Venetians secured the famous bronze horses, which, after having within the present century served as trophies of a later conquest, have been restored to their place on St. Mark’s.

It had been resolved before the attack on Constantinople, that, in case of success, the imperial crown should be awarded by six representatives of the French and six of the Venetians, who should swear to choose the fittest man. The claims of Dandolo might have seemed preeminent before all others; but his own countrymen dreaded such an elevation of one Venetian family above the rest, and perhaps apprehended that under a Venetian emperor of the east, Venice itself might sink into an inferior position. To them too Boniface of Montferrat was objectionable, as a near neighbor, whose interests might possibly clash with their own. The electors, therefore, on the 9th of May, made choice of count Baldwin of Flanders, a man of Carolingian descent, of high character, and in the full vigor of manhood. The marquis of Montferrat was the first to do homage; and a week later Baldwin received the crown from the bishop of Bethlehem, a papal legate who had lately arrived from Palestine.

It had been agreed that the patriarchate should be given up to that division of the allies which should not obtain the empire; and agreeably to this, the Venetians chose Thomas Morosini, a man of noble Venetian birth, a subdeacon of the Roman church, and one whose personal acquaintance with Innocent might be expected to bespeak the pope’s approval of the choice. Innocent had received from Baldwin a letter announcing the conquest, asking for the assistance of clergy from the west, and proposing a general council with a view to a reconciliation of the churches. It seems as if the brilliancy of the exploit, and the prospects which it opened for the Latin Church, in some measure overpowered his objections to the diversion of the crusade from its proper object. He therefore replied favorably; he reproved the crusaders severely for their excesses in the capture of Constantinople, especially for their sacrilegious plunder of holy things, which, he said, would make the Greeks hate the Latins worse than dogs, and so must hinder their return to the unity of the church; he disallowed the absolution which had been pronounced by the bishop of Bethlehem, as having been given without proper authority; he declared the compact between the French and the Venetians as to the disposal of the ecclesiastical property to be null, and the election of a patriarch to be informal, while, in consideration of Morosini’s merits, he appointed him to the patriarchate as if by his own authority. Morosini had been compelled by the Venetians to swear that he would bestow the dignities of St. Sophia’s and the chief offices of the hierarchy exclusively on Venetians or on persons who should have resided ten years at Venice. But on his appearance at Rome, the pope pronounced this oath to be void, and made him swear that he would not observe it. Morosini was then ordained deacon, priest, and bishop, and took the usual oath of metropolitan to the pope, who affected to bestow on the church of Constantinople precedence next to that of Rome, declaring that the precedence of “new Rome” in former times had been granted through the favor of the elder Rome. But the patriarch, in returning by Venice to Constantinople, found his fellow-citizens bent on exacting from him a renewal of his former oath as the only condition on which they would agree to show him due honor; and the pope, on being informed of the new oath, again declared it invalid. Innocent furnished the patriarch with instructions for the administration of his church: in places where the population was Greek, he was to place Greek bishops whose fidelity to Rome might be relied on, if such could be found; where it was mixed, the bishops were to be Latins. But it was soon found that, instead of forwarding the conversion of the Greeks, this and other measures conceived in a like spirit tended only to increase their alienation from the Latin church. Even among the Latins, the patriarch was unable to obtain submission to his authority. The French clergy charged him with having gained his office by trickery and by imposing on the pope; he was brought into conflict on questions of jurisdiction and patronage with the secular power, and with the patriarch of Grado; and the pope, although he endeavored to support him as far as possible, had to reprove him for his exclusive patronage of Venetians in appointments to ecclesiastical dignities, and for other acts inconsistent with Innocent's view of his duty.

The new empire was from the beginning sickly, and, instead of strengthening the Latin power in the east, was a burden on it. Baldwin invited Christians from all countries of the west to join the settlement, and the pope exhorted both laity and clergy to reinforce the crusaders; but those who acted on these invitations were for the most part grievously disappointed. An attempt was made, as in the kingdom of Jerusalem, to establish the feudal system, which was here the more unsuitable on account of its unlikeness both to the republican institutions of the Venetians, and to the old traditions of the empire. The partition of the conquests produced much disagreement among the Franks. Baldwin soon quarreled with Boniface of Montferrat, and in 1205, on a disastrous expedition, he fell into the hands of Joannicius, a perfidious savage to whom the pope had confirmed the title of king over Bulgaria and Wallachia, and whom the crusaders had provoked by scornfully refusing his offers of alliance. It is believed that Baldwin was put to death in prison, with circumstances of great cruelty, and to the pope’s intercessions for him Joannicius answered that they were too late. Two years afterwards, Boniface was killed in action against the same enemy, whom the pope in vain solicited to be at peace with the Latins of Constantinople; but in the same year they were delivered from the fear of Joannicius, who died by some unknown means. Henry, the brother of Baldwin, who had acted as regent since the emperor’s capture, was crowned as his successor in August 1206, and for ten years administered the empire with vigor and skill, contending on the one hand against the Bulgarians, and on the other against the Byzantine princes who furnished rallying points for their countrymen by founding little principalities in Asia and Epirus. Murzuflus, who had for a time combined with the dethroned usurper Alexius, might perhaps have been a dangerous enemy; but having been blinded by Alexius, he fell into the hands of the Latins, and, after a trial, was thrown from the top of the pillar of Theodosius at Constantinople. Alexius was also caught, and was shut up in a monastery. Henry wisely endeavored to conciliate the Greeks, both by checking religious persecution and by relaxing that rule of exclusion from all public employments which had branded them as a servile race. The pope also after a time mitigated the rules which he had laid down as to the preference of Latin over Greek clergy; but such concessions, even if they had been greater, would have come too late.

The people, who most substantially and lastingly profited by the Latin conquest of Constantinople were the Venetians. To them it brought a vast increase of the trade by which they flourished; and, while they declined to set up one of their own citizens as a candidate for the empire, they allowed them to make private conquests, so that the islands of the Levant became filled with petty Venetian princes. Henry Dandolo had become lord of Romania, and the dignity continued in his family for more than a century and a half. The aged doge himself died in June 1205, and was buried with great splendor in the church of St. Sophia.

While the main body of the crusaders had turned aside for the expedition against Constantinople, a part of them had gone on to the Holy Land, where other adventurers arrived by way of Marseilles and from northern ports; but these were not enough to engage in any great attempts against the infidels, and many of them, on hearing of the successes of their companions, had rejoined them in the new Latin empire. Innocent, however, although deeply grieved by the result of the expedition which had been undertaken for the deliverance of the Holy Land, abated nothing of his zeal for the cause, and throughout the remainder of his pontificate we find him repeatedly pressing on the sovereigns and people of the west the duty of a new crusade. For some years, indeed, the state of southern France was such that he thought it well to extend the privileges of crusaders to the men who were there warring for the extirpation of heresy; and during this time it was obviously inexpedient that those who were disposed to fight in behalf of the faith should be distracted between rival objects. But in 1213, when the Albigenses appeared to be effectually defeated, he recalled the indulgences for southern France, and sent Robert Curzon—an Englishman who had been his fellow-student, afterwards a preacher under Fulk of Neuilly, and was now cardinal of St. Stephen’s on the Coelian hill—to preach in France an expedition for the recovery of the Holy Land. Orders were issued that solemn monthly services should be instituted for the success of the crusade; and all who should take part in it were encouraged by the declaration that the religion of the false prophet must be near its fall, since of the 666 years allotted to it more than 600 were already completed. But Curzon showed himself indiscreet in the fulfillment of his commission. In order to win the popular ear, he inveighed bitterly and unscrupulously against the ordinary clergy; and by giving the cross to multitudes of inefficient persons—old, blind, deaf, lame, lepers, women and children—he rendered those who were fit for war unwilling to undertake an enterprise in which they were to be encumbered by such associates. The king and the clergy of France appealed to the pope against the legate; but Innocent approved of his proceedings, on the ground that those who were personally incapable of fulfilling their vow might help the crusade by paying a commutation.

A.D. 1212-13. CHILDREN’S CRUSADE

About the same time many were enlisted for the holy war in England and in Germany; and a strange independent movement was set on foot by one Stephen, a shepherd boy at the village of Cloies, near Vendome, who professed to have been charged by the Saviour in a vision to preach the cross. By this tale he gathered some children about him, and they went on through towns and villages chanting, “O Lord, help us to recover thy true and holy cross!”. Their numbers swelled as they advanced, so that when they reached Paris, they are said to have amounted to 15,000; they displayed banners, crosses, and censers. We are told that all the efforts of parents to restrain their children from joining the party were unavailing; nay, it is said that, when some of them were privately shut up, bars and locks gave way for their escape. Philip Augustus, after having consulted the university of Paris, endeavored to check the movement, but without success. Stephen had acquired the reputation of miraculous power; threads of his dress were treasured up as precious relics; and the number of his followers continually increased, so that it is said to have amounted to 30,000 when they arrived at Marseilles, which Stephen entered in a triumphal car, surrounded by a body-guard. Some shipmasters undertook to convey them gratuitously to Egypt and Africa; but these wretches were kidnappers, and their unfortunate victims were either wrecked on a rock of the Mediterranean, or, on reaching the African coast, were sold into slavery. In Germany a similar movement was set on foot by a boy named Nicolas, who, after having lost many of his companions through hunger and fatigue, arrived at Genoa with 7000 of them, among whom were many grown-up persons, and not a few women of bad reputation. Thence they struggled onwards to Brindisi, where the bishop of the place discovered that the father of Nicolas had a design of selling them into slavery. By this discovery the crusade was broken up; the unfortunate children tried to return home, but the greater part of them fell victims to the hardships of the way. The father of Nicolas was executed at Cologne.

Innocent, although he had taken no share in these insane and calamitous expeditions, declared that the zeal manifested by the children put to shame the listlessness of their elders; and the question of a new crusade was one of the subjects proposed for the great council which he assembled in 1215.

8

THE ALBIGENSIAN WAR

Innocent was zealous and indefatigable in his exertions against the heresies of his time. Among the most remarkable of these (although from its nature it was not likely to win much popular acceptance, even if free course had been allowed it) was the doctrine taught by a clerk named Amalric, a native of Bène, in the diocese of Chartres, who is described as a man of very subtle, but perverse and paradoxical mind. Amalric had been eminent as a teacher of logic and the liberal sciences at Paris before he betook himself to the study of theology. He is accused by his contemporaries of paying greater regard to Aristotle than to Holy Scripture; but later inquirers suppose that his errors are rather to be traced to the Arabian commentators than to Aristotle himself, and yet more to the influence of Plato and of Scotus Erigena’s book “On the Division of Nature”. His doctrine was pantheistic—that God is all, and that all is God; that everything issues from the All and will return to it. Hence he inferred that God was as truly incarnate in Abraham as in Christ; that the Holy Spirit spoke as really through Ovid as through Augustine. He is said to have maintained that the Trinity denotes three forms of the Divine manifestation, connected with the same number of stages in the history of mankind; that the second stage, under the Son, was nearly at an end, and that the third, under the Holy Ghost, would follow; that every Christian must believe himself to be a member of Christ, and that this was the only way of salvation. In consequence of a complaint from the University of Paris, Amalric was summoned to appear before the pope, who, after having heard him, pronounced against him. The university required him to retract his errors; and, having submitted to this humiliation, he soon after died of shame and grief.

After Amalric’s death his doctrine was taught by David of Dinant, although apparently in a coarser form and with new developments. Whereas Amalric had said that God is the source and the end of all things, David declared Him to be the material principle of all things. He asserted that the reign of the Holy Ghost was already come; that outward rites were needless; that acts done in the body were no sins, forasmuch as nothing could be sinful if it were done in love. Every one, he said, carries hell within, him, “like a bad tooth in the mouth”. And he held that the soul could by contemplation exchange its separate existence for that which it has in the Divine soul.

In 1209 an inquiry into the tenets of this sect was held by the bishop of Paris, in the presence of some lay magistrates. Fourteen of the sectaries were made over to the secular arm as guilty, and of these ten were burnt, and the others were committed to close confinements. It was ordered that Amalric’s bones should be disinterred and burnt; and his books were also condemned to the flames, with some of Aristotle’s writings, which had lately been brought from Constantinople and translated into Latin. The doctrines of Amalric were again condemned at the Lateran council of 1215; and in 1225 the work of Scotus, to which Amalric and his followers had directed attention, was proscribed by Honorius III. The last teacher of the party is said to have been one Godin, who was burnt at Amiens.

Notices are occasionally found of sectaries professing the Waldensian opinions. Thus, in 1199, Innocent wrote to the bishop and the faithful of Metz, in denunciation of a party of laymen and women who used French translations of the Scriptures, and on the strength of their acquaintance with these despised the clergy and their ministrations. The pope admits that a desire to know the Scriptures is not only innocent but praiseworthy; but he censures the party at Metz for their sectarian spirit, for imagining that the mysteries of the faith are open to the unlearned, and for their behavior towards the clergy—as to which he is careful to deprive them of such warrant as they might allege from the parallel of Balaam’s ass rebuking the prophet. He desires the bishop to inquire into the authorship and character of the vernacular translations; and in the following year he commissioned some Cistercian abbots to labour in conjunction with the bishop for the suppression of the heresy at Metz. In consequence of this appointment, it is said, the vernacular Scriptures were burnt, and the Waldensian opinions were extinguished.

There is mention of heretical, and seemingly Waldensian, teaching at Auxerre and in the neighboring dioceses; and in 1210 Innocent records the form in which some Waldenses abjured their errors, among which that of regarding ordination as unnecessary for the ministers of Christ is especially dwelt on. The presumption of preaching without a regular mission is also denounced by the Lateran council of 1215, in which those who should be guilty of it “under the appearance of piety”, are threatened with excommunication, and, in case of obstinacy, with yet heavier punishments.

Of all sectarian parties in this time the cathari were by far the most numerous and the most widely spread. Even within the papal territory they abounded. At Orvieto the opinions of this sect were especially rife among the female sex. A bishop, named Richard, endeavored to suppress them by severe punishments, such as banishment, and even death; but during his absence from the city, and through the influence of a new teacher, the cathari became so strong that they threatened to expel their orthodox fellow-citizens. On this the orthodox applied to the Romans for a leader, and, with the pope’s consent, a young man of high courage and ardent zeal, named Peter Parenzio, was sent to them in February 1199. Peter at once proceeded to take strong measures for the repression of the opposite party, and, after having proceeded in this course until the approach of Easter, returned to Rome for the festival. The pope, at an interview in a street near the Lateran, told him that he must now take an oath of fidelity as governor of Orvieto; to which Peter replied that he was willing to do so, but added that the heretics were so much exasperated as to threaten his life. He received full absolution from the pope, as if in prospect of death; settled his worldly affairs; and, notwithstanding the entreaties of his mother and wife, returned to his government, ready and eager for martyrdom. Three weeks later he met with the fate which he had expected—being dragged out of the town and murdered by some sectaries, who had gained admission to his house through the treachery of a servant. His death is said to have been followed by judgments on the murderers, by miracles at his tomb, and eventually by the suppression of heresy in Orvieto.

At Viterbo the heretics had gained such influence that an attempt was made to elect two of the “believers” as consuls, and the chief of the sect as chamberlain of the city, although he had been formally excommunicated. Innocent desired the bishops of Viterbo and Orvieto to eject these magistrates; and in 1207 he himself proceeded to Viterbo for the purpose of rooting out the heresy. The patarenes took flight; but this did not prevent the pope from inquiring into the matter, and he ordered that their property should be confiscated, that their houses should be demolished, and that all heretics, especially the members of this sect, should be “delivered to the secular arm”—a phrase which now occurs for the first time—in order to punishment. In the same spirit Innocent wrote to the authorities at Faenza, Bologna, Florence, Verona, Treviso, and other places. He severely censures the Milanese for their encouragement of the sectaries; that they not only did not “take the little foxes”, but cherished them until the foxes grew into lions, and the locusts into horses ready to battle; and he tells them that he had been urged to send a crusade to Milan as well as into Provence.  Beyond the bounds of Italy we read of heretics in Dalmatian Bosnia, and the Tyrol; at Strasburg, where about eighty were put to the trial of hot iron, and most of them were convicted and burnt; and of similar executions at Paris, Troyes, Rouen, Langres, and in various parts of northern France and Belgium, where a Dominican friar named Robert earned by his severities the glorious name (as the annalist Rinaldi considers it) of “the hammer of heretics”.

But it was in the south of France that the catharist doctrines chiefly prevailed. In this region they had become so general that the church and the clergy had fallen into the greatest contempt. The nobles and knights no longer allowed their younger sons to be trained for the ministry of the church, but put sons of their serfs into benefices, of which they themselves appropriated the tithes, while the priests were obliged to be content with a miserable pittance. As an instance of the disrepute into which the clergy had sunk, we are told that, instead of the expression “I would rather be a Jew than do such a thing”, it was now customary to say “I would rather be a chaplain”. They themselves were so sensible of their ignominy, that they were fain to hide their tonsure by drawing the hair from the back of the head over it. The heretics were so audacious that in the sight of the bishops and clergy they defiled the chalices and other sacred vessels, and threw the holy Gospels into the dirt. The princes of southern France were for the most part ill-affected to the hierarchy. Raymond VI, count of Toulouse, the most powerful of them next to the king of Aragon, had in early life associated much with heretics, and was suspected of inclining to their opinions, although rather on account of his roughness towards the clergy than of any expression of his belief. He had been excommunicated by Celestine for his aggressions on the abbey of St. Gilles; but he was able to obtain absolution from Innocent. The laxity of his life was notorious; of his five wives, three were living at the same time; he is even charged with incest by the unscrupulous writers of the orthodox party. The count of Foix was married to a Waldensian; of his two sisters, one was said to be Waldensian and the other a catharist; and, in common with the counts of Béarn and Comminges, the viscount of Beziers, and other princes of the neighborhood, he is described as an oppressor of the bishops and clergy.

Innocent, in the first year of his pontificate, addressed a letter to the prelates and nobles of southern France, exhorting them to take vigorous measures for the suppression of heresy. Patarenes, Waldensians, and others were to be anathematized and banished; but there is no distinct mention of death as a penalty, although it may perhaps be implied in the declaration that heresy is murder of the soul. But this letter met with little attention. To Raymond of Toulouse and his subjects, the requisition to persecute those whom they respected as peaceable neighbors was unwelcome. “We have been brought up with them”, they said; “we have relations among them, and we know that their life is honest”.

The pope in his letter had announced that two Cistercians, Rainier and Guy, were sent as legates into the country affected with heresy. Rainier soon after fell sick, and was succeeded by Peter of Castelnau, archdeacon of Maguelone, who, after having been a teacher of theology at Paris, had become a member of the Cistercian order. In 1204, the power of these envoys was extended; the cognizance of questions of heresy was transferred to them from the bishops, and they were authorized to suspend such bishops as should be found lukewarm in the cause; and on this they acted in some cases, although they found among the members of the episcopal order a general disinclination to submit to two monks, however specially empowered by the pope. At Peter of Castelnau’s request, the cardinal of St. Prisca was fixed as legate at Montpellier; and in 1204, Arnold Amalric, abbot of Citeaux, a bitter and unsparing enemy of heresy, with twelve members of his order, was added to the mission. Yet the work made little progress. The envoys held conferences with the heretics, but found themselves continually baffled by objections drawn from the evil lives of the clergy. In May 1205, they were strengthened by the appointment of a new bishop to Toulouse—Fulk or Folquet of Marseilles—a man who, as a famous troubadour, had formerly been among the ornaments of gay and licentious courts, but had lately been turned to a different career, had entered the Cistercian order, while his wife became a nun, and had taken up with a fervor natural to such converts an extreme zeal for the orthodox faith, with a fierce hostility against heresy. Still, the efforts of the missionaries were attended with little success; and they were almost in despair, when they fell in at Montpellier with Diego (Didacus) bishop of Osma, and Dominic, the sub-prior of his cathedral, who were returning from Rome with a commission to labor against heresy.

A.D. 1198-1206. DIEGO OF OSMA.

The legates, in conversation with the Spaniards, lamented their want of success; whereupon Diego told them that mere words would not be of any avail; that the only hopeful course for them was to counteract the professed simplicity of the heretics by putting aside their gold and silver, their pomp and splendor, and going forth like the apostles, barefooted and in poverty. The legates professed their willingness to follow this advice, if they might have the example of any sufficient authority; and the bishop told them that he would himself show them the way. Sending away his servants, horses, and baggage, and retaining with him only a few clerks, of whom Dominic was the chief, he remained in Languedoc, and provided by a large outlay of money for the support of those with whom he had associated himself. The Cistercians, according to their promise, sent away everything but their books of devotion and study, and followed the course which Diego had pointed out. The missionaries went barefooted, in companies of two or three, from place to place, and engaged the heretics in conferences, one of which lasted fifteen days; and in no long time the effects of the new system began to show themselves.

Another Spaniard, Durand of Huesca, who had been converted from Waldensianism, wishing to carry on the ascetic life to which he had been accustomed, proposed to found a society of “catholic poor”, who should be bound by a strict rule, as a means of counteracting the profession of poverty which gave a strength to heresy; and, having obtained the pope’s approval, he labored for a time with good effect, although his society soon disappears from view, having probably been superseded by the rise of the two great mendicant orders. In the end of 1207, the bishop of Osma returned to his diocese, where he died within a few months; and by the temporary withdrawal of the Cistercians about the same time. Dominic was left to carry on his work almost alone; but he persevered, and it is said that miracles were wrought by him in support of his teaching.

Peter of Castelnau had distinguished himself by his zeal, and had made himself especially obnoxious to the sectaries and those who favored them. In 1206, he excommunicated Raymond of Toulouse for refusing to turn his arms against the heretics. His companions, fearing for his safety in consequence of threats which had been uttered, sent him away for a time; but he soon returned, declaring that the cause of orthodoxy would never prosper until one of the preachers should be killed, and expressing a wish that he might himself be the first martyr, Count Raymond submitted and was absolved, on condition that he should take part in the persecution; and when Peter charged him with breach of this promise, he was violently enraged, so as to utter threats against the legate’s life. The magistrates and people of St. Gilles, dreading some fatal consequences, escorted Peter as far as the place at which he was to cross the Rhone; but next day, as he was about to embark, a man who had lodged at the same inn entered into conversation with him, sought a quarrel, and mortally wounded him. Peter’s last words were, “God forgive thee, as I forgive thee!” Suspicion of having instigated the murder fell on Count Raymond, to whose household the murderer belonged. The pope denounced him, absolved his subjects from their allegiance, and urgently and repeatedly exhorted the king and the nobles of France to take arms for the punishment of his crime, and for the extirpation of heresy. Raymond (who seems to have been really innocent of any share in the murder) feeling himself hardly pressed, entreated the pope to send some other representative than the abbot of Citeaux, whom he dreaded as his personal enemy; and Innocent affected to comply with this request by joining in commission with Arnold his own secretary Milo, while he strictly charged him to be guided in all things by the abbot. Cardinal Gualo was sent into France to proclaim a crusade for the extirpation of heresy, with all the privileges which had been bestowed on the warriors of the Holy Land, and the scheme (which had indeed been announced even before the murder of Peter) was proposed at a great national assembly at Villeneuve on the Yonne. Philip Augustus excused himself and his son, on the ground that while they were threatened on each side by “two great lions”—the king of England and the emperor—they could not leave their own territory undefended; but he granted leave for his subjects to take part in the enterprise, and at his own expense maintained 15,000 soldiers. The clergy were to pay a subsidy of a tenth for the support of the crusade; and multitudes enlisted, not only from religious enthusiasm, but partly from a wish to obtain the benefits of the crusading indulgences more cheaply than by an expedition to Palestine; partly from the northern hatred of the southern people, and in the hope of gaining settlements in the lands which were to be conquered. Among the leaders of the host were the archbishop of Sens, the bishops of Autan, Clermont, and Nevers, the duke of Burgundy, the count of Nevers, and Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester, who became the hero of the Albigensian war.

A.D. 1208-9. SIMON DE MONTFORT.

Simon was now about sixty years of age, and was regarded as a model of the chivalry of the time. In person he was tall, strong, and active; as a leader, he was at once daring and skillful; and his affable and popular manners contributed to secure for him the enthusiastic love and confidence of his followers. The sincerity of his devotion to the church had been shown in the late crusade, when he resolutely opposed the diversion of the armament from its proper object, and, refusing to share in the attacks on Zara and Constantinople, held on his course for the Holy Land. He was remarkable for his regularity in the exercises of religion, daily hearing mass and the offices of the canonical hours; and he was upheld by a lofty confidence in the protection of heaven. “Think you that I am afraid?” he said to one who attempted to encourage him while weakened by the withdrawal of a great part of his force—“it is Christ’s cause that is at stake; the whole church is praying for me, and I know that I cannot be beaten”. And it is told that a Cistercian, who prayed for him at the consecration of the Eucharist, was interrupted by a voice from heaven—“Why pray for him? there are so many praying for him that thy prayer is not needed”. But with Simon’s better qualities were combined some of the vices which not uncommonly seek their sanctification from high religious professions—a vast ambition, a daring unscrupulousness as to the means of pursuing his objects, a ruthless indifference to human suffering, and an unbounded and undisguised rapacity.

Raymond, through the exertions of his envoys at the papal court, had got a promise of absolution, if he could purge himself of the murder of Peter of Castelnau, and would submit to certain conditions. Although he complained of the terms imposed on him, he made his submission to the legates at Valence; and on the 18th of June 1209 he did penance and received absolution at St. Gilles, in the presence of three archbishops and nineteen bishops. The legate Milo met him in the porch of the church where Peter of Castelnau was buried, and, throwing a stole over his neck, led him by it into the building. There the count, after having been stripped to the waist, knelt down, submitted to flagellation, and swore obedience to the pope and the legate as to all the matters for which he had incurred ecclesiastical censure; to give up all interference in the appointment of bishops, to repair the wrongs which he had done to some bishops, to dismiss his mercenary soldiers, to expel all Jews from his dominions, to receive the crusaders, and to help them in their war against heresy. By way of security, he was to give up seven fortresses, with the county of Melgueil; and in case of his failing to fulfill his oath he was to fall under excommunication, and these pledges were to become forfeit to the Roman church. As the crowd blocked up the way by which he had entered, the count had to leave the church by a side door, and in order to reach this, he was obliged to pass close to the tomb of the man whose murder he was accused of having contrived.

Raymond Roger, viscount of Beziers, a gallant young man of twenty-four, and nephew of the count of Toulouse, waited on the legates at Montpellier, and endeavored to clear himself from suspicion of favoring the heretics by throwing the blame on some of his officers, who had acted without his orders. But his excuses were received with derision, and the viscount indignantly withdrew, to put his territories into a state of defense. The army of the crusaders speedily followed—a force which is very variously reckoned as to numbers, and composed of men from all parts of France, Normandy, and Flanders. At their head was Simon de Montfort, who had been chosen as general after solemn invocation of the Holy Ghost; with him was the legate Arnold of Citeaux, and Raymond of Toulouse had unwillingly joined the army with a few followers. When the crusaders appeared before Beziers, the viscount had gone onwards to Carcassonne. The bishop, who was in the army, was allowed by Arnold to offer his advice to his people, and recommended a surrender; but they relied on the strength of their city, and believed that the besiegers would speedily be driven by want of provisions to withdraw. Catholics joined with heretics in declaring that, rather than surrender, they would be drowned in the sea—they would eat their wives and children. “Then”, said abbot Arnold, on hearing this answer, “there shall not be left one stone upon another; fire and sword shall devour men, women, and children”. On St. Mary Magdalene’s day, a sally was made by the besieged and was repulsed. The besiegers found their way into the town, mixed up with the retreating inhabitants, and a butchery began, which was carried on to a literal fulfillment of the abbot’s words. It was in vain that the canons of St. Mary Magdalene, habited in the vestments of the altar, attempted to stay the bloodshed; men, women, children, clergy, were indiscriminately slaughtered, while the bells of the cathedral were rung until the massacre was completed. It is said that, when abbot Arnold was asked how the soldiers might distinguish Catholics from heretics, he answered, “Kill them all! The Lord knoweth them that are His”. The ordinary population of Beziers had been greatly increased by fugitives; but the number of victims is very variously estimated. Arnold himself reckons it at 20,000, while others make it as much as 60,000 or even 100.000. The city was given up to plunder, and was then set on fire.

The crusaders proceeded onwards to Carcassonne, where the viscount of Beziers commanded in person. The late terrible example had struck fear into all hearts; and as they advanced they found the country desolate—villages, and even strong castles, abandoned by their inhabitants, who had fled for refuge to the towns. Carcassonne stands on a steep and lofty hill, and was surrounded by a double line of outworks, each with its own wall and fosse; and the fortifications had lately been strengthened, partly with materials from ecclesiastical buildings which were pulled down. The crusaders speedily penetrated through the outermost walls, but the second enclosure was obstinately defended. Simon de Montfort was foremost in the assault; he was the first to plunge into the moat, and afterwards, at the risk of his own life, rescued a wounded soldier who was struggling in it. On the other side, the viscount Raymond-Roger was no less conspicuous, exposing himself everywhere at the head of the defenders, and animating their courage by words and example. The besiegers were repulsed with great loss, and retired after having set fire to the outer suburb. A second assault, eight days later, was also repulsed; and Peter, king of Aragon, then appeared to offer his mediation—a work for which it might have seemed that he was well fitted, by his connection with the princes of Languedoc on the one hand, and on the other, by his friendly relations with the pope, whose favor he had earned by expelling all heretics from his dominions. But the abbot of Citeaux would only allow that the viscount and eleven others might withdraw in safety; all the rest must surrender at discretion. On hearing this, the viscount declared that he would rather be flayed alive than desert his companions, and the king withdrew in disgust at the fruitlessness of his endeavors. The siege was closely pressed, and the inhabitants, crowded within the walls from a wide surrounding country, soon found themselves reduced to distress by excessive heat, by the scantiness of water, and by the stench which arose from the bodies of dead men and beasts. The viscount, having been decoyed into a conference by the assurance of a safe conduct, was committed to prison, under the plea, advanced by abbot Arnold, that no faith was to be kept with one who had been faithless to his God. The people, dismayed by the loss of their chief, were no longer in a condition to resist, and submitted to the terms imposed by the besiegers—that they should leave the city half-naked, carrying with them nothing but their sins. But for this extraordinary clemency the crusaders in some measure consoled themselves, by hanging or burning more than four hundred victims for the common offence of heresy.

The viscounty of Beziers was offered successively to the duke of Burgundy, to the count of Nevers, and to the count of St. Pol; but all refused to accept it in such circumstances; and the election of a viscount was committed to two bishops, four knights, and the abbot of Citeaux, who agreed in choosing Simon de Montfort. Simon, although free from any scruples as to the mode of acquisition, thought it necessary to make a show of refusal; but this was easily overcome, and he was hailed as viscount of Beziers and Carcassonne, promising to hold his dignities and territory on condition of a yearly payment to St. Peter. Within a few weeks, the deprived viscount, Raymond-Roger, died in his prison, and, although dysentery was alleged as the cause of his death, the guilt of it was popularly charged on Simon.

Simon soon found that his conquest was incomplete. On requesting the king of Aragon, as suzerain, to invest him in his new territories, he was met at first with delays, and afterwards with a refusal. Peter had taken up the cause of the late viscount’s infant child, Raymond Trencavel, and was endeavoring to organize means for the expulsion of the invaders. The count of Nevers and the duke of Burgundy withdrew from the crusade, in disgust at the late proceedings of the dominant party; and the great mass of the troops, having served the forty days which were all that was required by feudal duty, and were sufficient to earn the crusading privileges, likewise withdrew, leaving Simon with a very small force to maintain his conquests through the winter. It was with difficulty that he was able to hold his ground at all; many fortresses and other places fell away from him, and an incessant war was carried on, marked by the fierce exasperation of the contending parties, and by relentless cruelty on both sides. The pope, while he confirmed the election of Simon, and wrote letters in his favor to the emperor Otho and other sovereigns, expressed regret that the claims of the eastern crusade prevented any more effectual aid to that against the heretics of the West. In the spring of 1210, however, Simon received large reinforcements, under the command of his countess; and, notwithstanding the resistance of the count of Foix and others, his arms made considerable progress.

Raymond of Toulouse, although he had given the required securities, and had taken part in the crusade, had received such treatment from Simon and his party that he resolved to carry his complaints to Rome; and he was recommended to the pope by letters from the king of France, the duke of Burgundy, and the count of Nevers. He found the pope disinclined to listen to him, yet eventually succeeded in making a favorable impression; he received a provisional absolution, and it was settled that he should be put to canonical purgation before the legates in his own country; that, if he went through this successfully, he should be acknowledged as orthodox, and as guiltless of the death of Peter of Castelnau; and the pope dismissed him with valuable presents. But on returning home, he found that the legates were determined to deal harshly with him. Milo had lately died, and had been succeeded in the commission by Theodisius, a canonist, who was deeply prejudiced against the count of Toulouse, and was resolved, if possible, to deprive him of the benefit of the pope’s concession. When, therefore, Raymond appeared at St. Gilles, before the bishop of Riez and Theodisius, in order to the proposed purgation, Theodisius told him that, since he had forsworn himself by omitting to fulfill his former oaths as to lesser things, he could not be admitted to clear himself by oath from such crimes as heresy and murder. On this, Raymond began to weep, when Theodisius insultingly quoted the text—“In the great water-floods they shall not come nigh Him”; and, instead of absolving the count, he pronounced his excommunication afresh. Raymond was soon after cited to another council at Arles, where his cause was pleaded by a famous lawyer, Guy Cap de Porc. But the terms proposed—which it is said that the legates communicated in writing, out of fear lest the public reading of them should produce a tumult—were such as the count declared that all his territory could not satisfy. He laughed aloud on the announcement of them, and immediately, in defiance of the council’s order, rode away, in company with the king of Aragon. At Toulouse he caused the document to be publicly read aloud, and it was received with shouts of indignant derision. From Toulouse he went on to other towns, everywhere proclaiming the intolerable terms which had been offered to him, and everywhere exciting a determination to resist the invaders. His allies, the counts of Foix and Comminges, with others, joined their forces, and much of the conquered territory was wrested from the crusaders. On the other hand, a force of Germans, Auvergnats, Lombards, and others arrived to reinforce the crusading army, and the war was actively carried on. The legates declared Raymond to be an apostate, and his lands to be free for anyone who could seize them; and the pope confirmed their proceedings. The capital, Toulouse, itself was divided between embittered factions—the “white band”, formed by bishop Fulk for the extirpation of Jews, usurers, and heretics, and the “black band”, composed of members of the more tolerant party. At one time, the bishop excommunicated the citizens, and in obedience to his orders the whole body of the clergy, barefooted and carrying the consecrated host, went forth to the camp of the besiegers. Year by year Simon de Montfort made progress. The crusade was actively preached in Germany and northern France, and was joined by adventurers trained in the wars of Germany and of the East. William, archdeacon of Paris, was the chief engineer of the army, and by his mechanical skill contributed greatly to the success of sieges and other operations. Yet the fluctuating nature of Simon’s force prevented him from improving his advantages to the full, and his successes were chequered by much of hardship, and by occasional reverses.

A.D. 1212-13. BATTLE OF MURET.

In 1210, Peter of Aragon consented to invest Simon in the viscounty of Beziers and Carcassonne, and even connected himself with him by marriage—perhaps in the hope of sheltering the count of Toulouse and his son, who were married to two of the king’s sisters. But in this he was disappointed; and he endeavored to obtain from the pope redress for his kinsmen against the rapacity of Simon—who, he complained, took advantage of the king’s being engaged in fighting the Saracens, to oppress his vassals. In consequence of this appeal, the pope wrote to his legates and to Simon; but the local influence was, as usual, too strongly against Raymond, and the intercessions of king Peter with a council at Pamiers, in 1212, were unavailing. In the following year, Peter found himself set at liberty by the great victory of Navas de Tolosa, to take more active measures for the assistance of his kinsmen and allies on the other side of the Pyrenees. His force was so much superior that Simon might well have endeavored to decline a combat. But the viscount, with that confidence in his mission which never deserted him, was not to be daunted either by unfavorable circumstances or by omens: “You have spoken like one of the foolish women”, he said to his wife, on her telling him of an alarming dream; “for you fancy that we follow dreams and auguries, like the Spaniards”. And when a priest expressed some apprehensions, Simon replied by drawing from his pocket a copy of a letter from king Peter to a married lady—most probably one of his sisters, although De Montfort assumed that it was a paramour—telling her that for the love of her he was coming to drive the French out of the country. “What do you say to this” he asked; “So God help me, I do not fear a king who comes against God’s cause for the sake of a strumpet”. On his way to the relief of Muret, which the king and his allies were besieging, he entered the chapel of a Cistercian monastery, and, laying his sword on the altar, declared that he took it back as from God, to fight His battles. Next morning, at daybreak, he confessed his sins and made his will. He then attended a solemn mass, at which all the bishops who were with him excommunicated the count of Toulouse and his son, the counts of Foix and Comminges, and all their partisans—among whom the king of Aragon was supposed to be included, although, out of regard for a privilege by which he had been exempted from excommunication by any one but the pope himself, he was not named. Negotiations were attempted, but in vain; and on the following day the armies engaged at Muret. When it was proposed to Simon that his force should be numbered— “There is no need”, he replied; “we are enough, by God’s help, to beat the enemy”. During the fight, seven bishops, with other ecclesiastics, among whom was the preacher Dominic, were earnestly praying in a neighboring church. Peter of Aragon, after having done, prodigies of velour, was slain, with many of his nobles, and the greater part of his army perished on the field, or was driven into the Garonne. The gallant and chivalrous character of Peter excited a general lamentation over his untimely end; even De Montfort himself is said to have wept over him, “like another David over another Saul”.

But of such generous feeling towards an enemy the instances were very few in this war, which was shamefully remarkable for the savage ferocity with which it was waged on both sides. The crusaders, wherever they went, spread desolation over the country; they destroyed vineyards and growing crops, burnt villages and farmhouses, slaughtered unarmed peasants, women and children. Their cruelty towards prisoners was sanctified and exasperated by the pretense of zeal for religion. Thus, when La Minerve, near Narbonne, yielded after an obstinate defense, and it was proposed that the besieged should be allowed to retire, if they would recant their heresy, one of the crusaders protested that the terms were too easy. “We came to extirpate heretics”, he said, “not to show them favor”. “Be not afraid”, replied Arnold of Citeaux, “there will not be many converts”. And about a hundred and forty of the “perfect” of both sexes were burnt—some of them rushing into the flames with an appearance of exultation. At a castle called Bran, De Montfort cut off the noses and plucked out the eyes of more than a hundred of the defenders, leaving one of them a single eye that he might lead the rest—not, says Peter of Vaux-Cernay, that the count took pleasure in such things, “for of all men he was the mildest”, but because he wished to retaliate on the enemy. At Lavaur, where the commander Almeric and eighty nobles were led before Simon, he ordered that they should all be hanged. But as the highest gibbet, which had been erected for Almeric, fell down, the count ordered that the rest of the party should be put to the sword, and the crusaders, “with the greatest eagerness”, despatched them. Almeric’s sister, who, as being an obstinate heretic, was charged with complicated incest, was thrown into a deep well, and overwhelmed with stones. By the intervention of “a Frenchman, courteous and gay”, the other ladies of the castle were saved, but four hundred of the “perfect were burnt with immense joy”, according to the chaplain of the crusading army. The same phrase is used by the same writer in relating the burning of some Waldenses who were taken at Marcillac. Nor were such cruelties confined to one party. The heretics retaliated severely on such of the invaders as fell into their hands after a victory. They wounded and mutilated the fallen; they hanged prisoners, and afterwards mutilated their bodies; it is said that on one occasion, after having promised some soldiers safety for life and limb, they dragged them through the streets of Toulouse at the tails of horses, and at last hanged them. As a proof of the unnatural exasperation produced by such a war, it may be mentioned that Baldwin, brother of Raymond of Toulouse, having forsaken the count’s party and having afterwards fallen into his hands, was hanged by his brother’s orders or with his consent—the count of Foix and his son acting as executioners, and denying him the consolation of the last sacraments.

The clergy who took part in the crusade,—especially the Cistercians, who were deeply concerned in it,—excited general indignation by their bitterness, their cupidity, and sometimes by their treachery. Arnold of Citeaux was especially conspicuous for his frequent displays of all these forms of wickedness. Bishop Fulk of Toulouse is charged with having urged Simon de Montfort to extremities, in opposition to the advice of his lay allies. Cardinal Peter of Benevento, in 1214, affected to receive the counts of Foix and Comminges, with other dispossessed nobles, into the favor of the church that he might gain time for De Montfort’s movements; and this draws from the admiring historian who relates it an exclamation of “Oh the pious fraud of the legate! oh his fraudulent piety!”. The preachers of the crusade had provoked the ordinary clergy by inveighing against them as supine and indifferent; and they now caused great scandal by the eagerness which they showed to profit by the conquests of their associates. Thus, Arnold in 1212 became archbishop of Narbonne, and forthwith required De Montfort to do homage for the viscounty. On Simon’s refusal, he excommunicated him, and interdicted the churches of Narbonne. Simon treated this sentence with contempt, took away some castles from the archbishop, and set his soldiers to annoy him in various ways; and the quarrel was carried on into the pontificate of Honorius III. Innocent, when reports of the real state of things reached him, showed himself desirous to do right; but those who acted in his name were generally able to sway him by their representations, in which he acquiesced without attempting to ascertain the truth. The king of Aragon had induced him, in 1213, to reprove De Montfort and the legates for their ambition and rapacity, to order restitution of lands which they had unjustly seized, and to recall the crusading indulgences; but in the following year, under the influence of Theodisius and some bishops whom Simon had sent to the papal court, he again reversed his policy. In the same year, the legate Robert Curzon consented that the crusade against the heretics should take precedence of that against the infidels; he preached it with zeal, and himself joined the army, which was now raised to the formidable number of 100,000 men. Toulouse, where the surviving heretics from other parts had found a refuge, was taken in 1215. The bishop, Fulk, was eager that it should be destroyed; but De Montfort was unwilling to lose so valuable a spoil, and contented himself with demolishing the fortifications. In this campaign Prince Lewis of France took a part, but only for the forty days’ service which was required in order to the performance of a vow. The apprehensions of the older crusaders, that he might interfere with their conquests, proved to have been needless; but he and others carried back with them a feeling of disgust at the conduct of the warriors of the cross.

Raymond and his son had submitted in 1214, and were compelled to live privately at Toulouse, while bishop Fulk took possession of their palace. A council at Montpellier, in January 1215, ordered a strict inquisition after heretics, and chose Simon de Montfort as prince of the whole subjugated territory; but as the legate, Peter of Benevento, had no authority to invest him, a deputation was sent to the pope, who committed the lands to Simon’s custody until the council of Lateran, which was about to meet, should decide as to the disposal of them. At that council the two Raymonds and the count of Foix appeared. The younger Raymond was recommended to the pope by John of England; the favor which the dispossessed princes met with at the hands of many members of the council was such as to raise the indignation of Simon’s partisans; and the pope himself showed a disposition to befriend them. The bishop of Toulouse urged their punishment with great bitterness; to which the count of Foix replied in a vehement tone, telling Fulk that he was more like an antichrist than a Roman legate and charging him with having caused the death of ten thousand men. The precentor of Lyons spoke strongly in behalf of the counts, and in reprobation of the acts by which the crusaders had disgraced themselves; but the opposite party was too strong, and De Montfort was confirmed in all his conquests, with the exception of Provence and the Venaissin, which were reserved for the younger Raymond, if his conduct should appear to deserve them. The council enacted that heretics of all sorts should be made over to the secular power, which was bound, under pain of ecclesiastical censures, to do its part for the extermination of heresy; that the bishops should visit twice or thrice a year those parts of their dioceses which were suspected of heretical infection; and that certain persons in each neighborhood should be sworn to give information against heretics and their congregations.

In 1216 Simon de Montfort returned to northern France. In every town, as he went along, the champion of the faith was received with the greatest honor—the clergy and the people meeting him in procession, and welcoming him with shouts of “Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord!”, and he was invested by Philip Augustus as suzerain in the territories of Toulouse and Narbonne, with his other recent conquests. Yet while he was thus triumphant, a wide and deep feeling of dissatisfaction had been produced by the misconduct of the crusaders of Languedoc, even among those who favored their cause. Thus, William of Puy-Laurens, one of the historians of the war, remarks that, so long as the catholic army aimed at the suppression of heresy, all went well with them; but that when Simon introduced new and selfish objects, and when those who shared his conquests fell into evil living, God made them to drink of the dregs of the cup of His anger.

9

A.D. 1215-16. MENDICANT ORDERS.

DEATH OF INNOCENT III.

The pontificate of Innocent is remarkable in monastic history for the rise of the great mendicant orders founded by Dominic and Francis. The especial object of these societies was to counterwork the influence which the heretics acquired over the poorer classes of people by familiarly mixing with them and by preaching. For preaching suitable for the humbler classes had been almost disused in the church. Sometimes, indeed, a preacher was found to devote himself to the work of religious and moral reformation, like Eustace of Flai and Fulk of Neuilly; but more commonly the crusades were the only subject in behalf of which the clergy attempted to rouse the multitude by the power of eloquence, while almost the only means of religious instruction was the ritual, which, in so far as language was concerned, had long ceased to be intelligible. The heretics, on the other hand, had sedulously labored to spread their doctrines among the people. Their teachers had professed an apostolical poverty, while they, and such reformers as Arnold of Brescia, had denounced the wealth of the clergy and monks as an intolerable corruption. The new orders, therefore, brought to the support of the church a severity of life which had before been employed against it. They professed not only poverty, but beggary, forbidding the reception of endowments; and their object was not, as with older orders, to cultivate a contemplative piety apart from the world and its engagements, but to converse among men, and by teaching and example of life to draw them to salvation. Each of these orders had at the outset its distinctive character—the Dominicans, severely intellectual, rigidly orthodox, and tinged by the sternness and the gloom which had been impressed on the religion of the founder’s native land; the Franciscans milder and more genial, addressing themselves less to the intellect than to the sentiments and the affections.

SAINT DOMINIC

Dominic was born about 1170, at Calaruega, a village in the diocese of Osma. According to some writers (whose opinion, however, is gravely questioned), he was descended from the illustrious family of Guzman; and it is said that the effect of his eloquence was foreshown by his mother’s dreaming that she gave birth to a whelp carrying in his mouth a blazing torch, with which he set the world on fire. At the university of Palencia, he distinguished himself by his ardor in study; and in consequence of his reputation he was invited by Diego de Azevedo, bishop of Osma, to become a canon of his cathedral, where he rose to the dignity of sub-prior. His nature was tender and gentle; at the university, during a famine, he sold his books, with his own comments, which made them more precious to him, in order to relieve the distressed—saying that he would not study on dead skins while the poor were dying of hunger. And at a later time he would have sold himself to obtain the means of support for a man who hesitated to avow his conversion from heresy lest he should forfeit the charity on which he lived. But religious zeal steeled Dominic against the impulses of his nature; and while, as we are told, he was amiable towards Jews and infidels, he was unrelenting towards heretics. His life was rigidly ascetic; he gave more of his hours to prayer than to sleep, and, although during the day-time he was cheerful in his conversation, his nights were for the most part spent in severe penitential exercises; he flogged himself nightly with an iron chain, once for his own sins, once for the sinners in this world, and once for those in purgatory.

Something has already been said of Dominic’s labors in the Albigensian territory, where he spent ten years in endeavoring to root out heresy. The power of his preaching is described as marvelous; he was indefatigable in conferences and in private conversations; and a number of miracles are related as having been wrought by him in attestation of his doctrine. The amount of the part which he took in the Albigensian war, and in the establishment of the Inquisition, has been the subject of controversy, not so much between opposite parties, as between his earlier and his later admirers. For whereas in some ages it was supposed to be for his honor that the largest possible share in the persecution of heretics by the sword and by torture should be claimed for him—whereas Cistercians and Dominicans have quarreled for the honor of having furnished the first inquisitors, and a pope has thought to do Dominic honor by ascribing to him the origin of the Inquisition,—Dominic’s eulogists of later days have been no less eager to clear him from the imputation of acts which are no longer regarded as a title to the admiration of mankind. It would seem in truth that during the Albigensian crusade Dominic confined himself to the office of preaching. But if he is not chargeable with any such atrocities as those which have made Arnold of Citeaux infamous, there is, on the other hand, no reason for supposing that he ever attempted to check the worst deeds of Simon de Montfort and his followers. And, although it is certain that he did not found the Inquisition, it is yet possible that that institution may in some degree have originated in his preaching, as it certainly found among his brotherhood the most numerous and the most merciless of its officials.

The first foundation of the Spanish missionaries in Languedoc was a school at Prouille, intended for the daughters of the poorer nobles, who were often obliged by their necessities to commit their children to the free schools of the heretics for education. From this, Dominic went on to the formation of a brotherhood devoted to preaching and to the confutation of heresy. The new institution was patronized by bishop Fulk of Toulouse, who, on going to the Lateran council in 1215, took Dominic with him, and endeavored to recommend it to the pope. Innocent was at first disinclined to entertain the scheme; but it is said that he was warned by a vision in the night, and he then professed his willingness to give his sanction to it, if Dominic would comply with a canon by which the council, with a view to check the too great multiplication of religious orders, had enacted that persons who might wish to found a monastic society should place it under some one of the rules which had already been approved. Dominic, therefore, chose for his preaching fraternity the rule of the great preacher St. Augustine, to which some additional severities were annexed. On returning to Toulouse, Dominic received from the bishop a church in the city, with some churches in other places, and a proportion of the tithes of the diocese by way of endowment; he founded a convent, and began to send out his disciples into various countries. But in the beginning of the next pontificate he again went to Rome, where he eventually fixed the head-quarters of his order in the church of St. Sabina, on the Aventine, which was bestowed on him by Honorius III. From this pope the order received many charters, in one of which he speaks of them by the title of “friars preachers”, which afterwards became distinctive of them. On Dominic himself was conferred the mastership of the Sacred Palace—an office instituted with a view to the religious instruction of the households of the pope and cardinals, but to which later popes have attached more important functions, and among them the censorship of books. This office has always been retained by the order.

The new brotherhood made rapid progress. In England, they were patronized by archbishop Langton; at Paris (where they were known by the name of Jacobins, from a hospital of St. James, which was bestowed on them), they soon acquired an important influence in the university. In 1220, and again in the following year, Dominic held general chapters of his order at Bologna. At the first of these, he expressed a wish to resign the mastership; and, as the brethren would not consent to this, he insisted on the appointment of “diffinitors”, whose power should be supreme, even over the master himself. In Languedoc he had been willing to accept endowments; but he now adopted from the order lately established by Francis the principle of absolute poverty or mendicancy—whether from a belief in its soundness, or from perceiving that in it the Franciscans had a power against which his own order could not otherwise hope to make head. At the second chapter, the order was divided into eight provinces, each under a prior; and to these four others were added at a later time.

In addition to the friars (whose dress of white, with a black scapulary, was believed to have been shown to the founder by the blessed Virgin), the order included nuns, and also a grade of tertiaries—persons who continued to be engaged in the common occupations of the world, but who, by entering into a connection with the Dominican brotherhood, added greatly to its popularity and influence.

The death of Dominic, of which he had received supernatural intimations, took place at Bologna in 1221. It is said that a member of the order saw a golden ladder let down from heaven, and held at the top by the Saviour and the blessed Virgin, who drew it up until a friar who was at the bottom of it, and whose face was hidden by his cowl, had reached the bright opening above, while jubilant angels ascended and descended on either side; and it was afterwards found that the same hour in which this vision was seen, was that of Dominic’s departure. He was buried with great pomp by the cardinal-legate, Ugolino, bishop of Ostia (afterwards pope Gregory IX); and, after the miracles which he had done in his life had been far surpassed by those which followed his death, he was canonized by Gregory in 1233.

SAINT FRANCIS

The founder of the other great mendicant order, Francis, was born at Assisi in 1182. His father, a rich merchant, was then absent in France, and the mother gave the boy the name of John; but for this his father, on his return, substituted the name under which he has become famous. Francis, according to his biographers, had been foretold by the Erythraean Sibyl, and typified in the Old Testament. St. John, in the Apocalypse, had described him as an angel ascending from the east; he and Dominic were the two staves, Beauty and Bands, of Zechariah's prophecy; and, that the list of his conformities with the Saviour might begin with his birth, it is said that his mother, by the direction of an unknown visitor, repaired to a stable when about to bring him into the world.

Francis in his early years followed his father’s occupation, and for a time he gave himself up to habits which are rather to be described as idle and extravagant than as profligate. But he was sobered by a captivity of a year at Perugia, with whose citizens those of Assisi had gone to war, and, in consequence of some visions which were afterwards vouchsafed to him, he resolved to change his course of life. The severity of his religious exercises, the visions and raptures by which he was encouraged, the eccentric manifestations of his awakened spirit, need not be here detailed. He resolved to fulfill literally the precept “Give to every one that asketh thee”; and when money failed him, he gave away his clothes. The condition of lepers struck him especially with pity. The misfortune of these sufferers, whose frightful disease was then very common, was aggravated by social disabilities which seem to have originated in the religious view of the leprosy as typical of sin. There was a solemn service for their seclusion from the world; they were shut out from intercourse with men, and were treated as if dead. Many houses had indeed been founded for their relief; but Francis resolved to show his charity in a different way. Overcoming the natural loathing which he very strongly felt, he tended and kissed the sores of the lepers, washed their feet, and consorted with them; and early in this course it is said that he was rewarded by finding that a leper on whom he had bestowed his compassion miraculously disappeared.

One day, as Francis was in the church of St. Damian, in devotion before a crucifix, a voice from it addressed him by name—“Repair my church, which is falling to ruin”. The real meaning, as he is said to have afterwards discovered, related to the church of Christ; but Francis supposed the old building of St. Damian's to be meant, and resolved to find the means of restoring it. He sold a quantity of his father’s cloth at Foligno, and, returning to Assisi, offered the price of it and of his horse to the priest of St. Damian’s, who, however, was afraid to receive the money. Francis then began to beg in behalf of the restoration, but his “intoxication of Divine love” was taken for madness, and he was hooted and pelted by the mob. His father cited him before the magistrates for having stolen the price of the cloth which he had sold; but Francis refused to appear, on the ground that he was now the servant of God only; and the magistrates admitted that the case belonged to the ecclesiastical jurisdiction. The father was somewhat appeased by the recovery of his money, which Francis had thrown into a hole; but he summoned him before the bishop, that the young man might renounce his inheritance. Francis gladly obeyed; in the bishop’s presence he stripped himself of all his clothing, except a shirt of hair which he was found to wear next his skin, and he declared that he owned no other father but Him who is in heaven. Francis now put on the dress of a hermit; he continued to sing and to beg round the neighborhood for the restoration of St. Damian’s, and afterwards for that of two other churches; and his efforts were successful. His father, whenever he saw him, loaded him with curses; but Francis, by way of antidote, took for his companion a beggar whom he styled his father, and whose business it was at every curse to utter a blessing, and to make the sign of the cross.

Hearing in church the Saviour’s charge to His apostles, that they should go forth without staff or scrip or shoes or changes of raiment, Francis exclaimed that this was what he had been seeking for; and, throwing away his staff, his shoes, and all his clothes except a single coarse frock, he girt himself with a rope, and set forth as a preacher of repentance By degrees he gathered disciples, and when their number amounted to eleven, he drew up a rule for them, and resolved to seek the pope’s approval. Innocent at first hesitated, apparently from an apprehension that the proposed discipline might be found too severe after the first enthusiasm of the brotherhood should have passed away. But cardinal John of St. Paul’s strongly advocated the new institution, and the pope eventually sanctioned it, in consequence, it is said, of a dream, in which he saw the Lateran church in danger of falling, and Francis propping it up. He conferred on Francis and his brethren the clerical tonsure, and the authority to preach; and as they returned to Assisi their addresses were everywhere heard by enthusiastic crowds, who pressed around Francis and tore his dress to pieces in their eagerness to possess some relic of him. It is said also that he performed a multitude of miracles. The church of St. Mary in Portiuncula at Assisi—one of the three churches which Francis had restored, and the original cradle of the order—was given up to them, and the Franciscans speedily spread into all lands, their propagation being accelerated by the principle of mendicancy, which rendered endowments needless. Francis doubted for a time whether he should devote himself to prayer and contemplation or to preaching; but the question was decided by an intimation from heaven that it was his work to labor for the good of others. The brethren, therefore, addressed themselves especially to the work of preaching and teaching among the poorest classes; and thus they acquired an influence which made the order very powerful and important.

In 1212 a sisterhood was founded in connection with the order by Clara Sciffi, a noble maiden of Assisi, who left her father’s house to place herself under the guidance of Francis. The life of these sisters, who are commonly styled after the name of their foundress, was very rigid; some of them, it is said, had become so accustomed to silence, that, when compelled to speak, they could hardly form the words. Clara herself, although she supported her excessive mortifications with continual cheerfulness, is said to have never raised her head so high that the color of her eyes could be seen, except on the single occasion of receiving the papal blessing. On her death-bed, in 1253, she was visited by Innocent IV, and in 1255 she was canonized by Alexander IV. To the friars and the sisters was added in 1221 the class of tertiaries, or “Brethren of Penitence”,—persons who without forsaking secular life, or even the marriage-tie, connected themselves with the order by undertaking certain obligations, such as to dress plainly, to live soberly, to carry no weapon of offence, and to perform stated devotions. And, as in the case of the Dominicans, this link between the order and the world was found a powerful means of strength and influence.

Francis studied humility in its extremest form, and enjoined it on his disciples. When the multitude expressed admiration of his sanctity, he used to command one of the friars to load him with abuse. It was revealed in a vision to a member of the order that the seat from which an angel had fallen by pride was reserved as a reward for the humility of Francis. His followers were charged to court contempt, and to be uneasy when they met with usage of an opposite kind. They were not to be called brethren, but little brethren (fraticelli) they were to be minorites, as being less than all others. They were not to accept ecclesiastical dignities; there was to be no prior among them, but their superintendents were to be styled ministers, as being the servants of all. To the clergy they were to show profound reverence—if they met a priest riding, they were to kiss his horse’s feet. They were to be content with the poorest dress; a coarse frock, patched and clouted again and again, if necessary, a cord round the waist, and a pair of drawers, were all that a friar ought to possess. Their food was to be of corresponding quality; Francis stinted himself even in his allowance of water, although, when he mixed in society, he conformed to the usages of those around him. Yet he forbade extreme austerity. When a friar had almost starved himself to death, Francis encouraged him by his own example to take food, and, in speaking of the case to the rest of his companions, he told them to imitate not the abstinence but the love. When some of his followers had injured themselves by their severities, he forbade all “indiscreet inventions” by way of penance, such as the use of cuirasses, chains, or rings confining the flesh, and all endeavors of one to outstrip another in religion. Among the forms under which pride was to be combated, Francis greatly dreaded the pride of learning. His own education had been scanty, but it was supposed that the knowledge of Divine things came to him miraculously, and he seems to have expected his followers to learn in the same manner. When one of them expressed some difficulty as to parting with his books, he told him that his books must not be allowed to corrupt the gospel, by which the friars were bound to have nothing of their own. From another he took away even a psalter, telling him that, if that book were allowed him, he would next wish for a breviary, and then for other books, until he would become a great doctor of the chair, and would imperiously thunder out to his humble companion orders to fetch such books as he might require. He then astonished the novice by scattering ashes on his head, rubbing them on it with his hand, and telling him that he himself had been reclaimed from the temptation of wishing for learning by opening the Gospels at the text—“To you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God, but to others in parables that the knowledge of Christ crucified was all in all”. To the sisters of St. Clare, if they could not read, the permission even to learn was not given without insisting on humility of mind as a condition. Yet when asked at a general chapter whether men of learning might be admitted into the order, Francis replied that they might, because learning was not without its uses.

Francis was remarkable for his love of animals, which he treated as reasonable creatures. He often bought off lambs which were on their way to the slaughter, and in the church of the Portiuncula he kept a sheep, which, without any training (as we are told), used to take part in the services by kneeling and bleating. He preached to attentive audiences of birds on the benefits for which it was their duty to thank their Creator. Once, as he was about to preach, and found that some swallows were making a noise, he addressed them—“Sisters, you have spoken enough for the present, and it is my turn; be silent, and listen to the word of God”. He spoke to the fishes, to the worms, and even to the flowers. His love of personification embraced all sorts of objects. His own body he spoke of as “Brother ass”, on account of the heavy burdens which it was to bear and the hard usage which it was to experience; when about to undergo an operation of cautery, he addressed the fire as his brother, and begged it to deal gently with him; and it is said that in his last moments he uttered the words, “Welcome, sister Death!”. He saw, says an early biographer, the Creator in all His creatures; and it has been conjectured that the pantheism with which the order was afterwards infected may perhaps be traced to the founder’s love of nature, and to his fondness for personifying it.

Francis was desirous to preach to the infidels, and, if possible, to finish his life by martyrdom. With this view he embarked for Syria in 1212, but was driven back by storms. In 1213 or the following year, he set out with a like design for Morocco; but when he had gone as far as Spain, a serious illness compelled him to give up the attempt. In 1219 he and twelve companions sailed for Egypt, and joined the crusading force, which had just taken Damietta. The sultan of Egypt treated him with much respect, but declined to let the question between Christianity and Islam be decided by an ordeal, in which Francis offered to go into a fire with some Mahometan teachers, or even alone; and Francis returned to Italy after having foretold to the crusaders the reverses which soon after came on them. About the same time when he went into the east, five of his followers were sent into Morocco, where they were cruelly tortured and put to death in the following year, and thus reflected on the new brotherhood the glory of their martyrdom.

In the meantime the order was growing rapidly. In 1216 the first general chapter was held; and in 1219, before the founder’s departure for the east, another general chapter was assembled, at which as many as 5000 friars were presents The devils, it is said, alarmed at the progress of the new enemy, held equally numerous chapters in opposition; but their machinations were revealed in visions, and were foiled by the devotion of Francis and his brethren. At the Lateran council, in 1215, Innocent had declared his full approbation of the order; but the first formal charter bestowed on it was given by Honorius III, who in 1223, at the request of the founder, confirmed a stricter rule which Francis had then drawn up, and appointed cardinal Ugolino (afterwards Pope Gregory IX) to be protector of the minorites.

In 1224 Francis is said to have received the stigmata (or marks of the crucifixion), by which his conformity to the Saviour was supposed to be completed. He had retired to a mountain called Alvernia, among the Apennines, near Bibbiena, to keep a fast of forty days in honor of the archangel Michael, when in an ecstasy of devotion he saw a seraph with six wings, either crucified, or bearing between two of his wings a figure of the crucified Saviour. The vision deeply affected him; and forthwith he began to feel in his own body the likeness of the wounds which he had seen. It is stated that in his hands and in his feet the flesh grew out into the form of the nails by which the Saviour was fixed to the cross—the heads appearing on one side, and the points, sharp and somewhat turned back, on the other; while his side seemed as if pierced by a lance, and blood issued from the wounds. We are told that, although he tried to conceal these marks, they were seen by many persons while he was yet alive, and that the miracles wrought by them after his death converted many who until then had doubted. Francis survived the reception of the stigmata two years, during which he suffered greatly from illness of various kinds. Finding his end approaching, he desired that he might be carried into the church of the Portiuncula, where he solemnly blessed his weeping brethren, and breathed his last, lying on a shirt of hair and sprinkled with penitential ashes. His soul was seen in the form of a star, more dazzling than the sun, which was conveyed on a luminous cloud over many waters to the “abyss of brightness”. In 1228 he was canonized by Gregory IX; and both by that pope and by some of his successors, the story of the stigmata was affirmed as true. Alexander IV decreed that anyone who should speak against it was to be excommunicated, and that the power of absolving from the offence was reserved to the pope alone.

The later history of the Franciscans will come before us hereafter. A temperate historian has pronounced that at the time of the Reformation these were “perhaps the most profoundly corrupted of all the orders”.

10

THE FOURTH LATERAL COUNCIL

A.D. 1215-16.

The fourth general council of the Lateran, to which Innocent had long looked forward, met in November 1215. There were present at it two claimants of the Latin patriarchate of Constantinople, the titular patriarch of Jerusalem, seventy-seven primates and metropolitans, four hundred and twelve bishops, and more than eight hundred abbots, with ambassadors from Christian powers, and a multitude of deputies for bishops, chapters, and monasteries: the whole number of persons entitled to attend the sittings is reckoned at 2283. The business began on St. Martin’s day, when the pope preached on the text “With desire I have desired to eat the Passover with you before I suffer”. But the work of this great assemblage was hardly equal to the expectations which had been raised by the laborious preparations for it, and by its unequalled numbers and splendor. The part which it took in the affairs of England and of southern France has been already mentioned. Arrangements were made for a crusade to the east, which was to be carried out in the following year; but, although Innocent himself declared his intention of taking part in the enterprise, and wrote many letters in pursuance of this resolution, the execution of it was frustrated by his death.

But the fourth Lateran Council is chiefly memorable for two canons, relating to matters of doctrine and discipline respectively—the 1st, which for the first time laid down by the authority of the whole western church the doctrine of transubstantiation in the Eucharist; and the 21st, which prescribed for every catholic Christian the duty of confessing once a year at least to his own priest, and of yearly receiving the holy Eucharist at Easter.

The words which Innocent had chosen as the theme of his sermon before the council were speedily found to have had an undesigned prophetical meaning. In the following summer, he fell sick at Perugia, when on his way to reconcile the enmities of the Genoese and the Pisans. The seriousness of his ailment was not suspected, so that he indulged freely in eating fruit; and in consequence, as is supposed, of this imprudence, he died on the 16th of July 1216, at the age of fifty-five.

In this great pope the power of the Roman see had been carried to its utmost height; those who came after him, by endeavoring to advance it yet higher, provoked a reaction which proved disastrous to it. Innocent’s pontificate began at the early age of thirty-seven, and to the end of it he enjoyed the full vigor of his powers. He was exempted from the rough personal collisions, from the necessity of fleeing to the compassion of foreign princes, and from the other humiliations which had befallen many of his predecessors; in every quarter he appeared to be successful and triumphant; and his character, in which generous and amiable dispositions mingled in an unusual degree with the sterner qualities which tended to secure an ecclesiastical despotism, was fitted to take off from the invidiousness of his success. “He was dreaded by all”, says an English chronicler, “above all the popes who for many years had gone before him”. Other writers express thankfulness to God that under Innocent the catholic church triumphed over three kinds of enemies—the schismatics of the east, the heretics of the west, and the Saracens of the south. And he had carried out with a high hand in every country of western Europe his policy of establishing the papal authority as paramount over that of secular princes. Yet his success was more apparent than real; it was chequered by important failures, and in some cases temporary success bore within it the seeds of future reverses. As to Germany and the empire of the west, his policy would have utterly failed but for the assassination of Philip of Swabia; the emperor of his own choice turned against him, so that Innocent was obliged to set up in rivalry to Otho the natural heir, whom he had before thrust aside, and to consent to that union of Sicily with Germany under the rule of the Hohenstaufen, which the papal policy had long labored to render impossible. And, although his guardianship of Frederick may not have been unfaithful, yet, as being in the interest of the papacy only, it left impressions on the young prince’s mind which were amply shown in his later history, to the detriment of Innocent’s successors. The eastern Crusade, which Innocent had labored to set on foot, was diverted from its proper object to one which he found himself bound to denounce; and, although the splendor of the immediate result prevailed over his feelings of indignation, the power which the Latins thus founded in the east was sickly from the first; it tended to increase, instead of healing, the division between the Greek and the Latin churches; and after a few years of wretched decay, it came to an end. The crusade against the Albigenses, although successful, was attended with so much of cruelty and injustice that Innocent’s connection with it has left a deep stain on his reputation; and his eulogists find themselves driven to plead in his excuse that he whose eye watched over all Christendom knew no better than continually to choose unfit and untrustworthy agents; to be guided by their interested and untrue reports, and, when warned of their misdeeds, and stirred to some ineffectual attempts at redress, still to continue his reliance on them. His sanction of the mendicant orders was contrary to his own first judgment, and, notwithstanding the powerful help and support which the papacy derived from those orders, there was more than enough in their later history to justify the foresight of his original distrust. And in England, where the pope’s immediate triumph was most signal, it proved in the end disastrous to the papacy. He himself lived to find that the primate whom he had imposed against the will of the king, and in contempt of the right of election, took the lead in asserting the claims of the national church against the papal usurpations. And from the surrender of the crown by the despicable John, the English spirit took a more strongly anti-papal impulse, which, after continual provocation from the assumptions, the corruptions, and the outrageous exactions of Rome, prepared men’s minds for revolt against the dominion of the papacy.

CHAPTER II.

FROM THE ELECTION OF POPE HONORIUS III. TO THE DEATH OF INNOCENT IV.

A.D. I216-1254

1

HONORIUS III AND FREDERICK II

THE successor of Innocent, Cencio Savelli, who was elected at Perugia on the 18th of July 1216, and took the name of Honorius III, was a man of mild and gentle character. He was bent on carrying out the project of a crusade, and within a few days after his election he issued a letter inviting the Christians of the west to take arms in the holy cause. No one who had bound himself by the crusading vow was allowed to excuse himself; but those who, being unable to undertake the expedition in person, should aid it by furnishing substitutes or money, were to share in the privileges of crusaders. The pope earnestly exhorted that all feuds and discords should be laid aside; and he strongly insisted on the necessity of concerted action as being more effective than isolated efforts. But it was found that a general apathy had succeeded to the enthusiasm with which such enterprises had once been hailed. The collection of money went on slowly, and not without suspicion as to the truth of the professed object; while the enlistment of men was yet slower. Many of the clergy refused to pay their contribution of a twentieth; the pope found it necessary to arm the collectors with additional powers, to repeat his exhortations again and again, to rebuke the supineness of his flock, and to threaten them with the censures of the church. In one of his letters he quotes by way of incitement an assurance from the grand-master of the templars that Mahometanism was in a state of unexampled weakness, that it was daily declining, and that now was the time to strike. The war against the heretics of southern France was still allowed to count in some degree as an equivalent for the war of the Holy Land; but Honorius refused to extend a like privilege to a crusade against the heathens of Prussia.

From the greater sovereigns of Europe no personal service was to be obtained for the projected holy war. Philip of France was not to be drawn into a second expedition to the east. Henry of England was a child; and the elect emperor Frederick, although he had taken the cross at Aix-la-Chapelle with an enthusiasm which at the time was probably sincere, was unable to leave Europe so long as his rival Otho yet lived, and as the state of his dominions on both sides of the Alps was in other respects unsettled. It was therefore in vain that Honorius urged him by repeated applications to the fulfillment of his crusading vow. The Latin empire of Constantinople was miserably weak. On the death of the second emperor, Henry, in 1216, Peter of Courtenay, count of Auxerre, was chosen as his successor, and on the 9th of April in the following year he was crowned by the pope in the basilica of St. Laurence, near Rome, as the Romans would not allow the ceremony to be performed within the walls, lest it should be construed as bestowing any sovereignty over their city. But, having been treacherously invited to take his way to Constantinople through Epirus, he was seized by the lord of that country, Theodore, and committed to prison, in which he died. The elder of his sons declined the Byzantine crown; the younger, Robert, who accepted it, degraded the empire by his stupidity and indolence, his cowardice and his dissolute life. The Greek and the Latin clergy continued to quarrel with unabated vehemence. The Frank laity refused to pay dues to their clergy, and resisted all attempts to enforce ecclesiastical discipline; the monastic communities boldly defied their bishops; while the patriarch, although unable to control his own flock, provoked the pope by claiming not only independence of the Roman see but equality with it, and the territory of the empire was continually diminishing through the successes of the Greek princes who had established themselves on its borders, both in Asia and in Europe. From Constantinople, therefore, it was certain that no help was to be obtained for the recovery of the Holy Land.

In 1217 Andrew II, king of Hungary, made his way by Cyprus to Acre, where a large force, including many German princes and prelates, was already assembled. But there was much discord and disorder among the host; and King Andrew, alarmed by the sickness and death of many around him, hastened to return home, in defiance of the ecclesiastical censures which were threatened, and after his departure were pronounced, by the patriarch of Jerusalem. From Cologne and the lower Rhine an expedition set out in three hundred vessels—in consequence, it is said, of the appearance of fiery crosses and other portentous signs in the sky. Some of these crusaders, on landing at Lisbon, yielded to the request of Alfonso II of Portugal, that they would assist him against the Saracens; and, after having gained a victory for their ally, a part of them entreated the pope that they might be allowed to remain a year for further service of the same kind. But Honorius replied that they had done enough for Spain, and at his command they proceeded to Acre.

Agreeably to the design of the Lateran council, the chief force of the crusaders sailed for Egypt, under the command of John, a brother of Walter of Brienne, and, like him, a brave and skillful warrior. John had married in 1210 Iolanthe, the daughter of Sibylla by Conrad of Montferrat, and by her had become the father of a daughter of the same name. The elder Iolanthe had died in 1212; and in right of her and of her daughter John of Brienne claimed the kingdom of Jerusalem. Among the other chiefs were the duke of Austria, the patriarch of Jerusalem, cardinal Robert Curzon, and a Portuguese ecclesiastic named Pelagius, who bore the commission of papal legate.  The first object of attack was Damietta, which, after a siege which detained them sixteen months, fell into the hands of the crusaders. The inhabitants had been so much reduced by famine, pestilence, and the sword, that out of 80,000 only 3000 wretches are said to have remained alive; the air was tainted by the smell of corpses—some of which were partly eaten by the miserable survivors; yet even in the midst of these horrors the captors could not restrain their cruelty and rapacity. The report of this conquest was received in Europe with exultation, and afforded the pope a fresh ground for exhorting to the crusade; but it was not followed by any further successes. The army became enervated and demoralized. King John and the legate quarrelled, and John for a time withdrew from the expedition to prosecute a claim in right of his second wife to the kingdom of Armenia. After his return, the crusaders, 1220. who had been reinforced by fresh arrivals, advanced towards Cairo, but found their way barred by an overwhelming force of infidels, and began to fall back towards Damietta. The legate by his obstinacy prevented the acceptance of favorable terms offered by the sultan, Malek al Kameel; and the crusaders were soon reduced to great distress. Many of them perished by pestilence, many by the sword, many were carried away by the opening of a sluice which let loose on them the waters of the Nile; their vessels were in great part destroyed by the enemy; and at length they were fain to accept a truce for eight years, by which Damietta was to be relinquished, unless in the meantime some sovereign of the west should take up the crusade. The prisoners on both sides were to be surrendered, and the sultan promised to give up the true cross, “not, however, that which had been lost at Tiberias”. The sultan behaved with great humanity to the crusaders, supplying provisions to those of them who were in want.

The pope was greatly distressed by the failure of this expedition, in which it is supposed that 35,000 Christians, and perhaps twice that number of Mussulmans had perished. He endeavored to stir up Frederick, who had contributed to it by sending some ships, which arrived too late, and were unable to ascend the Nile; he attributed to him the disastrous result, and told him that all men blamed him for having caused it by his delay in the fulfillment of his vow.

POLICY OF FREDERICK II.

Frederick had now been delivered from the fear of Otho, who died in May 1218, having, on his death-bed, expressed great contrition, and according to some writers having even submitted to flagellation, as a condition of absolution and of reconciliation with the church. But Frederick still had other causes to detain him from the crusade. He was bent on procuring the election of his son Henry as king of Germany, and for this purpose he endeavored to conciliate the princes, both lay and spiritual, by concessions which in the event rendered them independent of the imperial authority. He relinquished the jus exuviarum, with all claim to the income of vacant sees, pledged himself to allow freedom of canonical election, and promised that sentences of excommunication, if not relaxed within six weeks, should be enforced by secular outlawry. Under the influence of these grants, the election of Henry was carried at Frankfort; but Honorius objected to it as a step towards that union of the German with the Sicilian crown which Frederick had promised that he would never attempt. In answer to his remonstrances, Frederick declared that the election had been the spontaneous act of the Germans; that the object of it was not to unite the crowns, but to provide for good administration during his own intended absence; and that, if he were to die, he would rather bequeath the kingdom of Sicily to the papacy than to the empire. The value of these professions has been variously estimated by writers in later times; but it seems hardly possible to believe that the emperor was sincere.

In September 1220 Frederick again crossed the Alps into Italy. Eight years had elapsed since the last appearance of a German force in that country; and in the meantime the feuds of Lombardy had been carried on with their usual bitterness. The Milanese, in consequence of neglecting the pope’s exhortations to peace, had been laid under an interdict, and had retaliated by measures which resembled the ecclesiastical censures as nearly as possible. The podestà had placed the archbishop under ban. At Parma and elsewhere the clergy were shut out from the benefits of the law; it was forbidden to do them any service, such as shaving them or baking for them; and it was decreed that any person who on his death-bed should be reconciled to the church should be buried in a dunghill. At length, a sort of peace was negotiated by cardinal Ugolino (afterwards Gregory IX), but discords still continued, and the authority both of the pope and of the emperor was unheeded.

Frederick wished to receive the iron crown of Italy at Monza; but the Milanese, in whose hands it was, refused to allow the use of it, and were therefore placed under the ban of the empire. Frederick, as he advanced towards Rome, held communications with Honorius, whom he endeavored to propitiate; and on St. Cecilia’s day he received the imperial crown from the pope’s hands in St. Peter’s. The splendid ceremony was attended with great demonstrations of joy, and even the Romans appeared for the time to be contents  Frederick again took the cross from Honorius or from the bishop of Ostia; and in all respects he appeared desirous to gratify the pontiff. The territories of the countess Matilda were made over to the holy see, under pain of outlawry for all who should detain any part of them. Laws were enacted for the liberty of the church and of ecclesiastical persons; for the exemption of the clergy from taxes and from secular jurisdiction; for the enforcement of ecclesiastical censures by civil penalties; for the severe punishment of heretics, and of any who should show them favor or indulgence.

From Rome the emperor proceeded into southern Italy. The guardianship of Innocent had not been favorable to the crown, and during the civil distractions of Frederick’s minority, and in the years which had passed since he left his native kingdom at eighteen, pretensions had been set up which, if admitted, must have reduced the sovereign to utter impotence. Frederick set to work with vigor for the recovery and assertion of his rights. He compelled many persons who had got into their hands castles and lands belonging to the crown—among them, some relations of the late pope—to surrender these possessions. He claimed a share in the appointment of bishops; and he taxed all orders of the hierarchy for the maintenance of his armies. In consequence of these measures a correspondence with Rome began, and soon assumed an angry tone on both sides.

Again and again the pope urged the emperor to fulfill his crusading vow; but Frederick, although he sent forth letters in behalf of the enterprise, continually advanced excuses grounded on the difficulties with which he had to contend at home. The two met at Veroli and at Ferentino in the following March. At Ferentino, where John of Brienne, the patriarch of Jerusalem, and the grand-master of the templars, were also present, it was resolved that Frederick, who had lately become a widower, should marry Iolanthe, the beautiful daughter of John and heiress of the kingdom of Jerusalem—a match which was intended to bind the emperor more closely to the cause of the crusade. All agreed that it would be useless and mischievous to attempt the holy war without sufficient means, and it was resolved that the expedition should be deferred for two years, during which Frederick was to employ himself in the settlement of his dominions, while king John, with the grand-masters of the Temple and of the Teutonic order, was to visit the chief kingdoms of the west for the purpose of exciting them to the crusade. But although the titular king was received with honor, he and his associates found that in France, in England, and in Germany their cause was regarded with coolness; and John was obliged to report to the pope that the publication of the crusade was unsuccessful—a result which he mainly ascribed to the faults of the friars and others who preached it. Philip Augustus, who died in 1223, bequeathed 100,000 livres for the holy war; but it appears that this sum was never fully paid, and his successor, Lewis VIII, instead of prolonging his truce with England, plunged afresh into war, which called forth remonstrances from the pope. In no long time differences arose between John of Brienne and his imperial son-in-law. Frederick, immediately after his marriage, which was celebrated in November 1225, assumed the title of king of Jerusalem, declaring that it no longer belonged to John, who had held it only as husband of the elder Iolanthe, and afterwards as guardian of her daughter; to which John replied by calling Frederick the son of a butcher, and by charges of infidelity and neglect towards his bride.

The pope and the emperor met again at San Germano in July 1225, and a new compact was concluded. Frederick was released from the vow which he had made at Veroli, and he now bound himself to go on the crusade within two years from the following August, to furnish a certain number of ships and of soldiers, and to advance certain sums of money, which were to be repaid on his setting out for the East. He consented that, if he should fail in any respect, the Roman church should have full leave to pronounce its censures on him; but it was stipulated that he should be absolved immediately on redressing any wrong which he might have done. But, although there is no reason for supposing that Frederick wished to evade his engagements, the circumstances of his dominions continued to prevent the fulfillment of them. Engelbert, archbishop of Cologne, whom he had left as regent of Germany and guardian of his son Henry, was assassinated in June 1225 by one of his own kinsmen, whom he had deprived of the advocateship of a monastery on account of misconduct in the exercise of it. In 1226, when the emperor was expected in northern Italy, the Lombards at a great meeting renewed their league. His summons to a council at Cremona was unheeded, and, while he claimed the rights which had been secured for the empire by the treaty of Constance, the Lombards refused to supply him with provisions, and guarded the Alpine passes so as to prevent his son Henry from joining him in Italy. For these offences they were placed under the ban of the empire, and a numerous assembly of prelates at Parma, headed by the patriarch of Jerusalem, urged the bishop of Hildesheim, as the pope’s representative, to excommunicate them. The matter was referred by both parties to the pope’s arbitration; but, although Frederick had attempted to conciliate Honorius by yielding to him in a question as to some Apulian bishops, whom the pope had taken it on himself to nominate on the ground that the emperor had forfeited his patronage by delay, Frederick had just reason to complain that the decision in his controversy with the Lombards was substantially unfair to him. An angry correspondence, which had already taken place, was renewed with greater bitterness; and an open breach appeared to be at hand, when Honorius died on the 18th of March 1227.

The anti-imperialist party wished to raise to the papacy count Conrad of Urach, cardinal of Porto, a hereditary enemy of the Swabian house; but Conrad declined the dignity, and Ugolino Conti, a near relation of Innocent III, became pope under the name of Gregory IX. Ugolino had been made a cardinal by Innocent, and had been employed in many weighty affairs, in which he had shown great ability. Frederick himself had characterized him as a man of spotless reputation, eminent for religion and purity of life, for eloquence and learning. He was especially skilled in the canon law, to which (as will be noticed hereafter) he made important additions. His temper was warm and vehement; although he is said to have been already more than eighty years of age, his mental faculties were unimpaired, and he retained even his bodily vigor to an extraordinary degree. Both the papacy and the empire were now represented by able and resolute champions of their respective claims—each inclined to assert to the full the prerogatives which he supposed to belong to his office; and the struggle between the two powers was no longer limited to one or two points, but extended over the whole of their mutual relations.

CHARACTER OF FREDERICK II.

Frederick’s character had now had time to develop itself, and displayed a remarkable mixture of good and evil qualities, which historians have amused themselves by tracing respectively to his ancestors on both sides. He was at once selfish and generous, placable and cruel, courageous and faithless. While growing up under the tutelage of the Roman see, he had learnt to dislike and to distrust it; he thought that Innocent, as his guardian, had allowed his rights to be invaded, not only by the church, but, for the church’s sake, by others, and in his dealings with Rome he employed a craft which he had learnt from Rome itself. His justice is celebrated for the fact that in matters of law the sovereign had no advantage over the subject. Of his religious opinions, it will be enough to say here that, having spent his youth in an island where a mixture of creeds existed side by side under a system of toleration, he had imbibed a spirit of latitude, which tended to render him indifferent to threats of papal censure; indeed it was always a charge against him that he showed undue favor to his Mussulman subjects, and was addicted to oriental habits of life. His personal accomplishments were remarkable; he could speak fluently the languages of all the nations which were reckoned among his subjects—Greek, Latin, Italian, German, French, and Arabic. He was curious in natural history, and delighted in using his friendly relations with eastern princes to form a collection of animals rarely seen in Europe—among them, the elephant, the camel, and the camelopard. A Latin treatise on falconry composed by him, or under his superintendence, is still extant. He cultivated the science of the Arabs, and among the learned men whom his patronage drew to his court was the famous Michael Scott, whom he employed in translating some of Aristotle’s works. He patronized astrology, and it is said that he at once mocked the predictions of his astrologers and entertained a superstitious belief in them. He was distinguished for his love and encouragement of literature; his court was the earliest home of Italian poetry, in which Frederick himself and his chancellor, Peter delle Vigne, were eminent. By birth and early training, the emperor was inclined to prefer the south to the ruder north; his court was the most brilliant in Europe, and its tone was probably determined by the notorious and excessive laxity of morals in which Frederick himself indulged. It is not to be wondered at that Gregory, soon after his election, addressed to the emperor a letter in which, after endeavoring to conciliate him by compliments, he remonstrates with him on the luxury and dissoluteness which prevailed around him, and adds serious warnings, such as a pope might without undue assumption have held himself entitled to address to the lay chief of Christendom, who had grown up under the guardianship of the apostolic see.

With Honorius, the advancement of the crusade had really been his chief purpose; but with Gregory it was subordinate to the exaltation of the papacy, so that the likelihood of a serious collision with the emperor was greatly increased. The pope sent forth a summons to Christendom; but the backwardness and apathy with which his predecessor’s exhortations had been received were still manifested on all sides. Frederick, although for political reasons he was unwilling to leave his dominions, collected men and ships, and on the 8th of September embarked from Brindisi. But a pestilence broke out which carried off many of his soldiers; many in alarm forsook the expedition; and the emperor himself, after having been three days at sea, withdrew at Otranto, under the plea of sickness, and repaired to the baths of Puzzuoli. On hearing of this, the pope was violently indignant. On St. Michael's day, at Anagni, he solemnly denounced Frederick excommunicate, in terms of the treaty of San Germano) he recounted the emperor’s dealings with the Roman court—charging him with ingratitude, with having endeavored by a long series of delays to evade his crusading vows, with having by his negligence caused the failure of the Damietta expedition, with having protracted the later expedition until the heat of the season brought on the pestilence which had wasted the army, with having deserted the holy enterprise under a nugatory pretense of sickness, to return to his habitual indulgence in luxury. It was in vain that Frederick sent some bishops to plead his cause; the pope renewed the excommunication again and again, and required all bishops to publish it. Frederick, by way of reply, sent forth a letter addressed to all who had engaged themselves to the crusade. In this he appealed to God as a witness to his sincerity in desiring to carry out his vow, and to the reality of the sickness which had prevented the fulfillment of his design. The pope, he said, had hindered him by stirring up his enemies, and had spent in maintaining troops against him the money which ought to have been employed in the crusade; he repelled the charges of ingratitude—if Innocent had taken up his cause, it was as a means of opposing Otho. He declared himself to be still resolved on going to the east, and desired his subjects to help him with men and money for the expedition. The emperor’s justification was publicly read in the Capitol at Rome by a famous jurist, Roffrid of Benevento.

On Maundy Thursday the pope again pronounced Frederick excommunicate, declared him to have forfeited the Apulian kingdom, and added an interdict on all places where he might be; but on Easter Monday, as Gregory was engaged in the celebration of mass, the Romans, among whom Frederick had formed a strong party, broke into the church, and, almost with personal violence, drove him from the city to seek a refuge at Perugia. But Gregory, by the help of the mendicant friars, who penetrated into every class of society, had means of spreading his charges and denunciations far more widely than the emperor’s vindication could reach.

Frederick, however, was resolved to prove that he was sincere in his professions as to the crusade.  In the end of June 1228, he again sailed from Brindisi, and, after having visited Cyprus, he landed on the 7th of September at Acre, where he was received with great demonstrations of joy, although the clergy significantly refrained from offering the kiss of peace. To Gregory, this expedition, undertaken by an excommunicated prince, in defiance of ecclesiastical censures and prohibitions, was more offensive than anything that Frederick had yet done; and, instead of aiding the emperor, he determined to thwart him to the utmost of his power. Frederick’s ideas as to the objects which might be effected by a crusade were largely modified by the circumstances of his time from those which had been entertained by earlier crusaders. The vast armaments by which it had formerly been attempted to overwhelm the infidel power were no longer to be raised; nor was the emperor himself, although brave and active, fitted by nature to rival the fame which Richard of England had won by his personal prowess. He felt nothing of the deadly and irreconcilable hostility against the followers of Mahomet which had animated the older crusaders; he had already exchanged presents with the sultan; it seemed to him enough if the main objects of the holy war could be secured by treaty, instead of insisting on the extermination of the enemy. On the other side, too, there was a disposition to treat. Kameel had been alarmed by the reports which reached him from Europe as to formidable preparations, which were, doubtless, exaggerated by fame; he was pressed by rivalries and discords among the professors of his own creed, so that at one time he had even invited Frederick’s assistance; and he believed that, if the emperor could be brought to an accommodation, no fear need be entertained as to the other western powers. Negotiations, therefore, were opened; and on the 18th of February 1229 a treaty was concluded, by which Jerusalem was to be made over to the Christians, with the exception of the Temple, which although open to them, was to remain under the care of the Moslem, who professed to regard it with no less veneration. Nazareth, Bethlehem, Sidon, and other places were also to be given up; prisoners were to be surrendered on both sides; and it was stipulated that the emperor should aid in enforcing the articles in favor of the sultan, if any Frank should attempt to violate them. By this treaty the Christians had gained more than they had for many years ventured to expect as possible. Even the compromise as to the Temple was vindicated by Herman of Salza, master of the Teutonic order, a man whose character was respected by all, as expedient in the circumstances of the case. Kameel was accused by his own people of having yielded too much, and Frederick, in a letter to the pope, took credit for having done important service to the church.

When, however, the emperor had entered Jerusalem in triumph, with the intention of being crowned as king in the right of his late wife (who had died in childbirth while the expedition was preparing to set out), he found that the papal denunciations had stirred up serious difficulties against him.  The claim of right, without election, was in itself obnoxious to the clergy. The patriarch, the templars, and the knights of St. John, were prepared to oppose him in all ways; and, although some persons held that, by having done that for the delay of which he had been excommunicated, he had entitled himself to be regarded as absolved, his more discreet friends, such as Herman of Salza, advised him to respect the censures. Instead, therefore, of receiving the crown from the patriarch with the usual Sunday, solemnities, Frederick took it with his own hands from the altar, and wore it until he reached his throne, from which he addressed the assembled multitude, relating the course of his dealings with the pope, whom, however, he did not charge with any worse fault than that of having misunderstood him. His speech was received with loud applause; but next day the archbishop of Caesarea, in the name of the patriarch Gerold, interdicted the city and the holy places—even the Saviour’s sepulchre—on account of the pollution which they had contracted from the emperor's presence. An order was received from the pope, that all Christians should refuse to obey him, and in consequence of this the Genoese and the Pisans held aloof; but Frederick overcame the difficulty by issuing his orders in the name of God and of Christendom. The patriarch industriously supplied the pope with unfavourable reports of the emperor’s behaviour at Jerusalem; he had outraged the clergy and religious orders, he had held friendly intercourse with the infidels; he had received presents of singing and dancing girls from the sultan, and lived like a Mussulman rather than like a Christian; he had used language which showed a disbelief of the Christian faith, and an inclination to the falsehoods of Mahomet. A plot was laid by some templars for surprising him on an expedition to bathe in the Jordan; but he was informed of it by the sultan, and after this and other displays of hostility, he took stringent measures for controlling the religious orders. Again and again the pope renewed his denunciations of Frederick, publishing them everywhere by the agency of the friars, together with the gravest imputations against the emperor’s faith and morals. And the papal forces, headed by John of Brienne and cardinal John of Colonna, invaded the Apulian kingdom.

Frederick, recalled by the tidings of these movements, suddenly returned from the east, and surprised his enemies by landing near Brindisi. The general feeling in his favor was speedily manifested by large desertions from the hostile army; and those who remained true to the pope were reduced by want of pay to plunder churches for the means of support. Herman of Salza and two bishops were sent to the pope, with the offer of advantageous terms of peace; but Gregory obstinately held out, and renewed his anathemas. He attempted to raise all Europe, to collect money from France, England, and against the emperor, and to set up a rival king in Germany; but these attempts met with little response. The general unwillingness to pay money for crusades was exasperated by the object of the crusade which was now proposed; and an opinion was very commonly expressed that Frederick had effected in the east as much as was in his power; that he was not deserving of anathema and deposition for having imitated Richard of England and Philip of France in treating with the infidels. The vindications of his conduct which he himself sent forth made a strong impression on the minds of men in general, and the progress of his arms was such as to affect even the stubborn resolution of Gregory. On the other hand, Frederick was willing to pay dearly for reconciliation with the church; and in August 1230 an agreement was effected at Ceperano, by which he was released from ecclesiastical censures, on condition of submitting to the church as to all the matters for which he had incurred his excommunication, and of paying a large sum to the pope by way of compensation for his expenses. Immediately after his absolution, Frederick visited the pope at Anagni, and both parties in their letters express great satisfaction as to their intercourse on this occasion.

An interval of peace between the papacy and the empire followed. In November 1230, the Romans, alarmed by a great inundation of the Tiber, and by a pestilence which followed on it, entreated Gregory to return from Perugia. In 1232, however, he found himself obliged to request the emperor’s assistance against his subjects, when Frederick excused himself on the ground that he was engrossed by the affairs of Sicily; and in answer to the pope’s repeated urgency that the crusade should be renewed, he declared that, so long as heresy was rampant among the Italians, especially among the Milanese (the pope’s own allies)—it would be absurd to go in search of mote distant enemies of Christ. But, notwithstanding these and other differences, the relations of the two powers were on the whole peaceable; and when the pope, after having been recalled in i233, had been again expelled by the Romans in 1234, he was restored by the arms of Fredericks

During this time of peace both Frederick and Gregory engaged in the work of legislation. The code which the emperor promulgated for Sicily was intended to harmonize and to supersede the various systems of law which had been introduced into that island by its successive masters—Greeks, Romans, Goths, Lombards, Normans, and Germans—and the chief author of it was Peter delle Vigne (or de Vineis), a native of Capua, who had raised himself from the condition of a mendicant scholar to the chief place in Frederick’s confidence and in the administration of his government.  In this code, which was published at Melfi in 1231, the temporalities of the church were secured to it, although Frederick in his later days did not always respect them; but care was taken to control the pretensions of the hierarchy. They were subject to taxation and to the judgment of secular courts, nor had they any exclusive jurisdiction except in matrimonial causes. Appeals to the pope were not allowed except in matters purely spiritual, and were altogether forbidden if the sovereign and the pope should be at variance. The sale of land to the clergy was prohibited, on the ground that they declined the feudal duties attached to the possession of it; and it was enacted that, if land were bestowed on them, they should either sell it or provide for the discharge of the feudal services. It was declared that the king might legitimatize the children of a clergyman—a remarkable proof of the extent to which marriage prevailed among the clergy. Gregory vehemently remonstrated against the principles embodied in this code as to the relations of church and state; but the emperor replied that his power of legislation was independent of any other authority, and the difference would have been carried further, but that at that very time the pope was driven from Rome by his people.

On his own side, and in remarkable contrast with the imperial legislation, Gregory, who had been noted for his skill in canon law, put forth a body of Decretals, in which the principles of Hildebrand and Innocent III were carried to their greatest height. According to this code, the clergy were to be wholly exempt from taxes and from secular judgment; all secular law was to be subordinate to the law of the church; and the secular power was bound to carry out obediently the church's judgments. There was, however, one subject as to which the rival systems of law were in accordance with each other. While Gregory was severe in his enactments against heresy, Frederick was no less so—declaring heresy to be worse than treason, and in this and his other legislation condemning heretics to be burnt, or, at least, to have their tongues cut out, while he denounced heavy penalties against all who should harbor or encourage them. In explanation of such laws, it has been supposed that the emperor wished to benefit his own reputation for orthodoxy at the expense of others; and that, as they were chiefly directed against the sectaries of Lombardy, he regarded the religious errors of these as connected with the political disaffection which prevailed in the same province.

While Frederick, induced alike by natural inclination and by the political expediency of remaining on the scene where the contest with his chief opponent was to be waged, continued to reside in his southern kingdom, his son Henry, whom he had left in Germany, was persuaded to listen to counselors who dwelt on the grievances of his dependent and subordinate condition, and on the dishonor done to Germany by the emperor’s preference of Apulia and Sicily. In the end of 1234, Frederick was startled by intelligence that Henry had allied himself with the cities of Lombardy, and had set up the standard of rebellion.  At Easter 1235, after having restored the pope to Rome, he set out for Germany, where he put down the rebellion without difficulty, and, on Henry’s submission, admitted him to forgiveness. It has been supposed that the pope was concerned in instigating this rebellion; but, as Frederick, in the most unmeasured of the manifestoes which he issued in their later quarrels, never taxed him with any share in it, there can be no reasonable doubt that the strong disapproval which Gregory pronounced against Henry’s courses—even authorizing bishops to excommunicate him if he should not surrender—was sincere. During this visit to Germany, the emperor strengthened his family alliances by marrying,  July 15, at Worms, Isabella, the beautiful sister of the king of England—a match which appears to have been suggested by the pope; and he took part in the translation of the body of St. Elizabeth, widow of the landgrave of Thuringia, which was performed with great solemnity at Marburg in the presence of a vast concourse of people.

The reconciliation with Henry did not last long; the prince, by breaking his engagements, provoked his father to severer measures, and, after having been confined successively in several fortresses of southern Italy, threw himself from his horse, while on his way from one prison to another, and died in consequence of the fall.

FREDERICK AND THE LOMBARDS

For some years the emperor’s relations with the Lombards had been uneasy. On his summoning a diet to Ravenna in 1231, they repeated their conduct as to the diet of Cremona—absenting themselves from the meeting, and preventing Henry (who was yet faithful to his father) from joining him with the princes of Germany. Gregory, like his predecessor Honorius, had been accepted by both parties as arbiter of their differences; but, while his decision was not satisfactory to the Lombards, Frederick, not without reason, complained of it as too favorable to them. The Lombards, although divided among themselves by furious enmities of city against city, and of faction against faction within the cities, renewed their league in 1235, advancing claims beyond those which had been conceded by the treaty of Constance; and in the following year Frederick resolved on war, for which he adroitly assigned as a motive the desire to put down the heresy which was rife in Milan and throughout the north of Italy. While engaged in the siege of Mantua, he addressed to the pope a long letter in refutation of the charges which were brought against him; but Gregory continued to insist on them, blaming him for his cruel treatment of monks and friars, for his invasions of the church’s property, and his aggressions on her rights, and holding up, by way of contrast, the devout submission of Constantine, Charlemagne, and other pious emperors.

A.D. 1236-7. BATTLE OF CORTE NUOVA.

Frederick’s arms were everywhere triumphant. In the midst of his successes against the Lombards, he was recalled to Germany in the winter of 1236, by the tidings that duke Frederick of Austria had attacked and defeated an imperial army; but the duke was speedily put down; his capital, Vienna, gladly received the conqueror; and in that city the emperor was able to procure from the assembled princes the election of  Conrad, his son by the daughter of John of Brienne, as king of the Romans in the room of Henry. The choice was soon after confirmed at Spires; and in November 1237 Frederick’s prosperity was  crowned, at the battle of Corte Nuova, by a victory so signal that it seemed to compensate the imperial power for the loss of Legnano in a former generation. The Lombards, after having obstinately defended until nightfall the carroccio which bore the standard of Milan, withdrew from the field with heavy loss, and the car itself fell into the hands of Frederick, who, after having paraded it triumphantly at Cremona, with the podestà of Milan exhibited on it as a captive, sent it to Rome for the ornament of the Capitol. In Rome itself the emperor’s interest was maintained by partisans who made the pope’s position uneasy, and for a time expelled him. But by the execution of his prisoner, the podestà of Milan, Peter Tiepolo, son of the doge of Venice—although the act had been provoked by some attacks on the part of the Venetians—Frederick drew on himself the especial enmity of the great maritime republic, which was bitterly shown in the sequel.

After having attempted without success to bring Frederick to submission by a mission of some bishops, who were charged to represent to him his offences against the church, and having assured himself of the support of the Genoese and the Venetians, the pope proceeded on Palm Sunday 1239 to pronounce a sentence which was more publicly proclaimed on the following Thursday. In this sentence the emperor's misdeeds were recited—that, in breach of his solemn oaths, he had plotted seditions at Rome against the pope, and had attempted to assail his power; that he had hindered the journeys of papal emissaries and the access of persons who were on their way to the papal court; that he had kept many bishoprics and abbacies vacant, to the great injury of religion; that he had seized, imprisoned, and slain members of the clerical order; that he had occupied territories belonging to the apostolic see; that he had plundered churches and had oppressed the Cistercians, the Templars, and the Hospitallers; that he had prevented the recovery of the Holy Land. For these and other offences he was declared to be excommunicated and anathematized; he was “delivered to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit might be saved in the day of the Lord”; his subjects were released from their allegiance, a curse was laid on every place in which he should be, and all ecclesiastics who should officiate in his presence or hold intercourse with him were deposed. And the pope issued letters by which it was ordered that this sentence should be generally published on Sundays and festivals, with ringing of bells and lighting of candles.

Frederick was keeping Easter with great pomp at Pavia when the news of his excommunication reached him; and he resolved to publish it himself, together with his solemn protest against it. He appeared in the fullest splendor of the imperial attire before a vast multitude, and, after the papal sentence had been read aloud, the chancellor, Peter delle Vigne, made a speech in vindication of his master from all the charges contained in it. The emperor himself then rose and addressed the assembly, declaring that, if the sentence had been pronounced on just grounds, he would have submitted; but that, as it was without any such foundation, he repelled it as a grievance and an insult. He addressed letters to the cardinals, to all Christian princes, and to the people of Rome, recounting the whole history of his dealings with the popes, professing a deep respect for their office, but denouncing Gregory as having wronged him, and offering to justify himself before a general council. He also issued severe orders against such of the clergy and monks as were likely to take part against him. All friars who were “of the land of the unbelievers of Lombardy” were to be expelled from the Sicilian kingdom, and security was to be taken of other friars that they would not offend the emperor. The monks and clergy were heavily taxed. Such of Frederick's clerical subjects as were in the papal court were required to return by a certain day under severe penalties, and it was forbidden under pain of death to introduce any letters from the pope against the emperor. In the following year all Dominicans and Franciscans were compelled to leave the kingdom, except that two, of native birth, were allowed to remain in each of their convents.

The pope met Frederick’s protests by a letter of extraordinary violence, in which he spoke of the emperor as a man utterly false and untrustworthy. He reproaches him with ingratitude to the Roman church, declares the pretext of illness in his first attempt at a crusade to have been untrue, and reflects severely on his administration. But the most remarkable part of this letter was that in which, after having compared Frederick to the apocalyptic beast which rose out of the sea with the name of blasphemy on his forehead, he charged him with having said that the world had been deluded by three impostors, of whom two had died in honor, but the other had been hanged on a tree; and with having ridiculed the idea that the Almighty Creator of the world could have been born of a virgin. The truth of these charges has been vehemently debated. Frederick, educated in Sicily, had grown up in a laxity of religious opinion, which naturally resulted from the extraordinary mixture of races and creeds around him; his views as to many subjects were, no doubt, different from those which were sanctioned by the authority of Rome; and very possibly the stories as to his levity of speech on sacred or serious matters, may have at least some foundation of truth, while it is probable that his constant hostilities with popes, and his keen sense of the injustice which he supposed himself to have met with at their hands, may have affected unfavorably his belief in the doctrines which they taught. But that he had come to deny the great verities of the Christian faith, is an accusation advanced by his bitter and unscrupulous enemies, hardly credible in itself, and one which he himself strongly and steadily repelled. In answer to Gregory’s letter, he sent forth one in which he denies the imputations on his faith, and strongly asserts his orthodoxy. He allows the pope’s power of binding and loosing, but says that it has its limits, and if wrongly exercised is null; and he distinguishes between the church and the person of Gregory, whom he attacks with unmeasured vehemence, retorting on him the imagery of the Apocalypse by styling him the great dragon, and that Antichrist of whom the pope had pronounced Frederick himself to be the forerunner. He declared the real cause of the pope’s enmity to be his refusal to sanction the marriage of his illegitimate son Henry or Enzio, king of Sardinia, with one of Gregory’s nieces.

The charge of infidelity, advanced by the successor of St. Peter, would perhaps in other circumstances have been fatal to his opponent. But at this time the minds of men were so violently exasperated by the rapacity of the popes, that they were not disposed to receive with implicit belief such an accusation from such a quarter. This rapacity had been carried far beyond all precedent. In England, the exactions for the crusades, although sanctioned by the feeble Henry III, had caused deep and general disgust, not only among the laity but among the clergy. It was complained that the money collected for the Holy Land disappeared without any result; that the efforts which ought to have been limited to the original sacred purpose of the crusade were prostituted by being turned against the emperor; that although the pope, after having gathered funds for his crusade against the emperor, speedily made peace with him, no part of the contributions had been repaid; that the mendicant friars, who had been the chief agents in raising this money, took state on them, in violation of their professions of evangelical poverty and humility, and spent it freely on themselves. Italians occupied the benefices of the church in vast numbers, and sucked the wealth of the land, while they disregarded all the duties of residence, hospitality, and charity. And in the discontent produced by these grievances, men were struck by the inconsistency of the charge as to placing the three chief religions of the world on the same level of imposture, with that other charge of inclination to the religion of Mahomet which had formerly been brought against Frederick, and was still repeated. The emperor’s manifestoes made a deep impression, and the accusation of infidelity was generally disbelieved.

In France, too, even under the reign of the saintly Lewis IX, the clergy had been provoked by the Roman exactions, and there was a feeling that the pope had proceeded too rashly. It was said that the greatest prince in Christendom ought not to have been excommunicated without a general council; Frederick’s services in the holy war were remembered as a ground for discrediting the imputations against his faith; it was resolved that a mission should be sent to inquire of him directly as to the truth of the matter: and he was believed, when, with tears of anger, he thanked the envoys for having referred the question to himself, and met the charge by an indignant denial.

It was in vain that Gregory endeavored to stir up opposition in Germany by desiring the electors to choose another king instead of the excommunicated and deposed Frederick; they answered that it was for them to elect, and that the pope had no other part in the matter than to crown the prince whom they had chosen. In Germany, too, the assumption of the papal agents—among whom Albert of Beham, archdeacon of Passau, was the most conspicuous—excited a general spirit of revolt against the authority of Rome, so that even bishops were found to declare that the Roman pontiff had no jurisdiction in Germany except by their consent; to protest loudly against the spirit of aggression and usurpation by which the policy of Rome was directed, and to proclaim their adhesion to Frederick, as the best hope of deliverance from the Roman oppression. The duke of Bavaria wrote to the pope, in April 1241, that the greater part of the German prelates and princes might be expected in autumn to appear in Lombardy for the assistance of Frederick; and about the same time Gregory received other letters from Germany, as well as from France and Denmark, entreating him to make peace.

Although the pope exerted himself to the utmost to raise up opposition to the emperor in Italy—even inciting monks and clergy to fight against him as if he were a Saracen—Frederick’s arms made continual progress. In 1240, he had taken Viterbo, and approached the walls of Rome, when the pope, in the extremity of danger, had recourse to extraordinary measures. He held a solemn procession, in which a part of the true cross and the heads of St. Peter and St. Paul were displayed; and, taking the crown from his own head, he placed it on the relics of the apostles, to whom he addressed a prayer that they would defend the city, since the men of Rome hung back from its defense. The people, moved by this and by the force with which Gregory dilated on the emperor’s offences, took the cross with an unanimity which had long been unknown; and Frederick thought it well to pass on into southern Italy, without attempting an assault on Rome. The success of his arms, however, was continued, and among his allies appear some whose names would not have been expected to occur in such a connection. Thus Elias, minister-general of the Franciscan friars—the most effective agents of the papacy—joined the emperor, although it was soon found that the deposition and excommunication with which this step was visited destroyed all his influence in the order. And John Colonna, the pope’s ablest general, and the most important member of the college of cardinals, on being desired by Gregory to break off a truce which he had negotiated, refused. “If you will not obey me”, said Gregory, “I no longer acknowledge you as cardinal”. “Nor do I acknowledge you as pope”, replied Colonna; and he carried over his troops to the emperor.

Gregory had summoned a general council to meet at Easter 1241. At an earlier time, the expedient of a general council had been much in favor with Frederick; but he saw that such a council as was now proposed—an assembly packed by his enemy with persons who had already declared themselves against him—was not likely to do him justice.   He protested that popes had no right to summon general councils without the imperial sanction—especially such a pope as Gregory, who was leagued with the heretical and rebellious Milanese, and used the prelates who were at his beck to overrule the rights of princes who were subject to no earthly judgment. And he also dwelt on other objections —such as that the notice was too short for those who, on account of their distance from the scene of contention, were most likely to be unprejudiced in the quarrel. He endeavored to persuade sovereigns to restrain their bishops from attending; while the bishops themselves were plied with alarming arguments from the difficulties of the journey, from the emperor's power, which rendered it unsafe to travel without his passport, and from the notorious greed of the Roman court. On hearing, however, that a number of bishops were assembled at Genoa, Frederick offered them a safe passage by land, with the intention of meeting them on their way to Rome, and of setting before them a vindication of his conduct. But the pope’s representatives prevented the acceptance of this offer, and the members of the intended council embarked on board a fleet hired from the republic of Genoa. Off Meloria, a rocky island nearly opposite Leghorn, they were unexpectedly attacked by a combined fleet from Sicily and Pisa, under the command of Frederick’s son, king Enzio, which sank three galleys, and took twenty-two, with many smaller vessels. The number of prisoners amounted to about 3,000, among whom were three papal legates,—one of them, cardinal Otho, laden with the spoils of England—many archbishops and bishops, the abbots of Cluny and Citeaux, and the deputies of the Lombard cities. These were all carried to Naples, and were distributed among the fortresses of Apulia, from which after a time the French bishops were released at the intercession of their sovereign.

Gregory on hearing of this disaster was greatly exasperated, and sent forth letters in which he vehemently denounced Frederick for having captured the ecclesiastics who were on their way to a general council, after having himself often expressed a wish for such an assembly. The emperor now advanced into the neighborhood of Rome, and was laying waste all around him, when in his camp at Grotta Ferrata he received the tidings that Gregory had died on the 21st of August—partly, it would seem, from mental agitation, partly in consequence of being confined within the walls of his city during the excessive heats of summer. Frederick professed to see a fitness in the circumstance that August had proved fatal to the enemy of the Augustus, and expressed a hope that a successor of more peaceful character might be found. With some difficulty eight cardinals were brought together in the Septisolium at Rome—some of them having been allowed by Frederick to leave their prison for a time in order to choose a pope. But their votes were divided, and a second election was necessary before they could agree in choosing Gregory Castiglione, bishop of Ostia, a nephew of Urban III. The new pope took the name of Celestine IV; but within eighteen days the papacy was again vacant by his death, and the vacancy was prolonged almost two years by the dissensions of the cardinals among themselves.

THE TARTARS IN EUROPE

Frederick now felt himself at liberty to turn his attention to an enemy of a different character from the popes with whom he had been long contending. The Mongols or Tartars, after the death of Genghis, the founder of their empire, in 1237, had continued to push their conquests in all directions. In 1226 a vast horde of them, which was believed to extend twenty days’ journey in length, and fifteen in breadth, had overwhelmed Russia; and Europe was alarmed by the reports of their prodigious numbers and of their savage character. They overran Poland without difficulty; but in Silesia they were encountered, near Liegnitz, by a force of Germans under the duke of the country, Henry the Pious. The inequality of numbers—30,000 against 450,000—and the death of the German leader gave the victory to the invaders; but by this resistance western Europe was saved, and the Tartars, instead of advancing further, turned their course into Hungary, where they overcame king Bela IV, and displayed great barbarity and cruelty. While the emperor’s enemies, with the usual extravagance of party-hatred, charged him with having brought this terrible scourge on Christendom, Frederick, in answer to all cries for aid to repel them, had alleged the danger of giving the pope an advantage against him, and the pope had been loudly blamed for detaining him in Italy. But it would seem that the emperor now dispatched Enzio, with such forces as he could spare, to the aid of Conrad in Germany, and thus contributed to the repulse of the barbarians, who, after having been defeated with great slaughter, retreated towards the Volga.

The long vacancy of the papal see was popularly charged on Frederick, who may, indeed, be fairly supposed to have been very willing to see it protracted. The English clergy sent to him a mission of remonstrance on the subject, and the French threatened that, unless a new pope were speedily chosen by the cardinals, they themselves would set up a pope of their own, by virtue of a privilege which the apostolical pope Clement was said to have bestowed on St. Denys the Areopagite. Thus urged from various quarters, the emperor wrote to the cardinals, reproving them for their corruption, ambition, and other faults, complaining that he was defamed on their account, and urging them to proceed to an election. With a view to this, they were released from prison, and were allowed to meet at Anagni; but their factious divisions still continued, and it was not until after Frederick had let his soldiery loose to ravage their estates that they agreed in choosing Sinibald Fiesco, cardinal of St. Laurence in 1243. Sinibald, a noble Genoese of the family of the counts of Lavagna, and eminent for his legal and theological learning, had hitherto adhered to the imperialist politics of his family; but Frederick, when he was congratulated on the result of the election, answered that, instead of having gained a friendly pope, he had lost a friendly cardinal—that no pope could be a Ghibelline. By styling himself Innocent IV, Sinibald seemed to announce a design of following the policy of the great pope who had last borne the name of Innocent; and this design he steadily carried out. In some respects his pretensions exceeded those of any among his predecessors; he aimed at a power over the church more despotic than anything before claimed; and the vast host of the mendicant friars, who were wholly devoted to the papacy, enabled him to overawe any members of the hierarchy who might have been disposed to withstand his usurpations. Yet, although he was less violent than Gregory IX, his pride, his rapacity, and the bitterness of his animosity against those who opposed him, excited wide dissatisfaction, and many who were well affected to the papacy were forced to declare that the pope’s quarrels were not necessarily the quarrels of all Christendom.

Frederick, notwithstanding the misgivings which are imputed to him, sent his congratulations to the new pope, and asked for absolution from the censures which, as he said, had been wrongfully pronounced by Gregory; and in a public document he expressed a belief in Innocent’s fitness for his office, and in his zeal for peace and justice. Innocent, on the other hand, from the beginning of his pontificate, encouraged the spreading of rumors discreditable to the emperor, which were busily carried about by the mendicant friars—that he neglected the exercises of religion, that he was unsound in the faith, that he lived with Saracen mistresses, who were guarded in eastern fashion by eunuchs, that he favored Mahometanism and its professors in all possible ways. These rumors produced no small impression, and about this time events seemed to tend in favor of the pope. Viterbo drove out its  imperialist garrison, and Frederick’s attempts to retake it were baffled by the desperate valor which the inhabitants of all ages and of both sexes displayed in the defense; other defections from the  imperial party followed, and Innocent was received into Rome with great demonstrations of joy. Negotiations were opened between the emperor and the pope, and were protracted until the holy week  of 1244, when a treaty very disadvantageous to Frederick was agreed on.   But as to the fulfillment of this, serious difficulties arose.   As sacrifices and concessions were required on both sides, which party was to begin,—the pope by absolving Frederick, or the emperor by giving up the cities which he had promised to surrender? Each was inclined to charge the other with bad faith. With a view to a conference, the emperor had advanced to Civita Castellana, and the pope to Sutri; but on the 28th of June, Innocent suddenly disappeared. On hearing of his flight, Frederick exclaimed, “The wicked fleeth when no man pursueth”, and sent 300 Tuscan cavalry after him; but the pope, who was attired in a military disguise, reached Civita Vecchia by outriding all his train, and was received on board a fleet, which he had arranged that his Genoese countrymen should dispatch for his deliverance in case of need. After some danger at sea, he reached his native city, where he was received with great magnificence and with general enthusiasm. The air was filled with the chant “Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord!” and with the response, “My soul is escaped, even as a bird from the snare of the fowler”. The fugitive was visited by the marquis of Montferrat, by deputies from the Lombard cities, and by envoys of Frederick who urged him to return; but to these last he answered that it was useless to listen to the offers and promises of one who had been guilty of so many deceptions as their master.

Genoa, however, was only to be a temporary resting-place, and, notwithstanding a severe illness which added to the difficulties of the way, the pope crossed the Alps, and continued his journey to Lyons. At Lyons—a city nominally belonging to the imperial kingdom of Burgundy but practically independent under its archbishop, who was his zealous adherent— Innocent found himself safe. But when he made overtures to be invited into other kingdoms, he met with no welcome. Before leaving Genoa, he had been informed of the failure of an attempt on France—that when king Lewis, who was a confrater of the Cistercian order, visited Citeaux at the time of a general chapter, he was implored with great solemnity to allow the Michaelmas pope to settle at Reims, but that by the 1244. advice of the French estates he declined the request. When some cardinals wrote to Henry of England that the pope was desirous to see “the delights of Westminster and the riches of London”, and suggested that the king should invite him, the English cried out that they had been sufficiently pillaged by Rome without entertaining the pope in person; and from Aragon the answer was not more encouraging. About the same time a papal collector was driven from England by the general indignation at his rapacity—the king not daring to protect him; and on his reporting his adventures to the pope, Innocent, smarting at the recollection of the late refusals, exclaimed, that it would be well to make peace with the emperor, “for when the great dragon is crushed or quieted, the little serpents will soon be trodden down”. But although he attempted to open negotiations with Frederick, it soon became apparent that they were hopeless.

FIRST COUNCIL OF LYONS.

From Lyons, in January 1245, Innocent issued citations to a general council, to be held in that city at the feast of St. John the Baptist ensuing, for the consideration of the discord between the emperor and the church, of the danger from the Tartars, and of the differences between the Greek and Latin churches. Frederick was invited to attend, or to send representatives; but in the meantime the pope—in consequence, as he asserted, of fresh offences—renewed his excommunication. This sentence was received with very various feelings; we are told, for instance, of a priest at Paris, who in publishing it declared to his congregation that he did not know the right of the matter, but that one of the parties must have greatly wronged the other; and therefore that he, as far as he had power, excommunicated the guilty person, and absolved him who had suffered wrong. After a preliminary meeting in the monastic church of St. Just, the council assembled in the Cathedral on St. Peter’s eve. It was attended by the Latin emperor of Constantinople, by the patriarchs of Constantinople, Antioch, and Aquileia, and by a hundred and forty archbishops and bishops, of whom the archbishop of Palermo was almost the only prelate from the emperor's dominions. But Frederick, although he considered the synod to be unfairly composed, felt that, as he had often expressed a desire for a general council, he ought not to be unrepresented in it, and, in addition to the archbishop, had sent some envoys, headed by Thaddeus of Sessa, a doctor of laws and judge of the sacred palace—a man of eloquence, prudence, and courage, eminent both in council and in war. At the outset, a disturbance was caused by the attempt of the patriarch of Aquileia to seat himself as an equal with the eastern patriarchs; but at their remonstrance his seat was thrown down, although the pope afterwards allowed it to be re-erected.

After the council had been opened with the usual solemnities, the patriarch of Constantinople brought forward the dangers and difficulties which beset his church and the Latin power in the east. The English bishops next urged the canonization of their late primate Edmund; but the pope allowed both these subjects to pass without any satisfactory reply. Thaddeus of Sessa then rose, and, after apologizing for the emperor’s absence on the ground of sickness, offered in his name peace with the church, restoration of the Latin empire in the east, aid against the Mongols, deliverance of the Holy Land, and satisfaction for all offences and aggressions against the church. The pope admitted that these promises sounded fairly, but asked who would be sureties for the performance of them. “The kings of France and England”, answered Thaddeus. “Then”, rejoined the pope, “if he fail, I shall have three enemies instead of one”

The second session, four days later, was opened by the pope with a speech in which he allegorized the Saviour’s five wounds as figuring the present dangers of the church—the Tartars, the schism of the Greeks, the heresies of the patarines and others, the state of the Holy Land, and the enmity of the emperor. The falsehood of Frederick’s pretense that his quarrel was not with the papacy but with individual holders of it, was (he said) sufficiently proved by his proceedings during the vacancy of the see. He enlarged on Frederick's misdeeds—the favor which he showed to Saracens, his entertainment of Saracen mistresses with their attendant eunuchs, the bestowal of his daughter on the heretical Greek Vatatzes, and the like; yet amid all this invective it is remarkable that there was no mention of the old charge as to the “three impostors”. Again Thaddeus of Sessa stood forward, and defended his master at all points, meeting some of the accusations by the evidence of papal letters which he produced. But the pope declared that for his innumerable offences Frederick deserved an ignominious deposition. The intercession of the English envoys was disregarded; but those of France were able to obtain a short delay, and the emperor was invited to appear in person within twelve days—a time hardly sufficient to allow of his compliance. Instead of this, he dispatched Herman of Salza, grand-master of the Teutonic order, the bishop of Freising, and the chancellor Peter delle Vigne to reinforce his representatives who were already at Lyons; but the pope refused to wait even three days for their arrival, and on the 17th of July proceeded to hold the third and last session of the council. At this session the appeal of Thaddeus to a future pope and to a more general and more impartial synod was unheeded. The representatives of England, who interposed by presenting a long list of grievances as to the oppression of their national church by Rome, were put aside by being told that the matter required deliberation. Innocent again vehemently dilated on the emperor's offences—his aggressions on the church, his suspected heresy, his seizure of prelates on their way to a general council, his relapse after a relaxation of former censures, his Saracen connections and habits; and to these charges it was added that he had caused the assassination of his own kinsman the duke of Bavarian For these crimes, it was declared that Frederick was deposed; his subjects were released from their allegiance, and the German princes were desired to choose another king, while the pope reserved the disposal of the Sicilian kingdom for consideration with his cardinals. Again Thaddeus implored that the sentence might be deferred, and the representatives of the English and French kings, with the patriarch of Aquileia, joined their intercessions; while on the other hand Frederick's enemies urged the pope to proceed, and the sentence was solemnly pronounced, with the extinction of candles, and the other symbolical forms provided by the ritual, while the general awe was heightened by the appearance of a meteor which, as the words were uttered, shot across the sky. On hearing the judgment, Thaddeus of Sessa burst out into sighs and tears. “This is a day of wrath!” he exclaimed; “truly the Tartars, the Chorasmians, and the heretics have cause to triumph and exult in what is done”. In the name of their master, he and his companions pro tested against it, appealing to a future pope, to a general council, to the princes of Germany, and to all sovereigns, and declaring Frederick's willingness to refer the whole question between himself and the church to the arbitration of king Lewis of France.

Frederick was at Turin when he received the news of his deposition. “Where are my caskets?” he indignantly exclaimed; “let us see whether I have lost my crowns”. Then, taking one of the crowns from its case, he placed it on his head, and, with an air of intense defiance, declared that neither pope nor council should deprive him of his crown except at the cost of a bloody struggle; that he now felt himself released from all obedience, reverence, love, or other duty towards the pope. He issued, accordingly, a protest against the sentence, as being null for many reasons : as contrary to the facts of the case, as pronounced in the absence of the accused, and by a person who had no competent authority, forasmuch as the emperor was the source of all law, and was subject to God alone. And with this protest were combined a vindication of his own orthodoxy, and a vehement attack on the pope for his wealth and luxury, for neglect of pastoral duty, for blood-guiltiness, for his extravagance in building a sumptuous palace at Anagni, while he allowed Jerusalem to be “a bondmaid to dogs and tributary to Saracens”. The pope replied by a letter in which Frederick’s behavior was compared to that of a sick man who complains that, after having refused milder means of cure, he is subjected to the knife and to cautery, and it was enounced that the Saviour bestowed on St. Peter the kingly as well as the priestly power. The violence of Frederick’s language startled and shocked his contemporaries, who interpreted it as an avowal of an intention to destroy the church; and the effect of the pope’s sentence was partly seen in the refusal of the duke of Austria’s daughter to marry an excommunicated emperor. The imperial theory had, indeed, been of late shaken by many things,—among them, by the papal deposition of Otho and by the choice of Frederick in his stead,—nor did the princes of Christendom understand that it was their interest to make common cause with the empire.

In the north of Italy, Frederick began a war which was carried on with extreme bitterness and with a neglect of the ordinary humanities. An eye-witness, Salimbene, tells us that during these hostilities beasts and birds of prey were allowed to multiply unchecked—that wolves howled around the walls of cities, and sometimes were able to find an entrance, when they killed and ate those whom they found asleep under porticoes. In Sicily a revolt was stirred up by papal emissaries, who were authorized to offer the privileges of crusaders to all who should take arms against their sovereign.

Frederick, instead of attempting to strengthen himself by alienating a portion of the clergy from the pope, was tempted by his anger to the unjust and impolitic course of attacking the whole clerical order. He charged them with fattening on the alms which were intended for the relief of the poor, inveighed against them as luxurious, and declared an intention to relieve them of their superfluous wealth. His officials were ordered to exact a third of all their revenues for the support of the imperial cause; and to punish by deprivation and banishment any ecclesiastics who should comply with the pope’s orders by refraining from the celebration of religious offices. He declared that there were too many bishoprics and canonries, and among the impieties which the pope charged against him it is stated (probably not without exaggeration) that he kept fifty sees and innumerable parish churches vacant. The mendicant orders, whom he styles the pope’s “evil angels”, were let loose against him, to inflame the people, down to the very lowest, by their unscrupulous denunciations; and he ordered that not only such of them as should be caught in spreading the letters of excommunication and interdict, but any other persons who should carry or receive such letters, should be burnt. On both sides there were charges of intended treachery—that Innocent had employed some members of the emperor’s household to poison him; that Frederick had hired ruffians to assassinate the pope. The accusations against Frederick were strongly denied by him, and are utterly improbable; and although it is very possible that some fanatical monk may have conceived the idea of ridding the world of an excommunicated emperor, it is not to be supposed that the head of the church himself was privy to any such atrocious design. In order to meet the imputations of heresy or unbelief, which he found to be the most dangerous weapons against him, Frederick desired the archbishop of Palermo, with two Dominican friars and some abbots, to examine him as to his religious opinions, and, when they had satisfied themselves of his orthodoxy, to state the result in a paper, which they were to present to the pope. But Innocent, instead of receiving their testimony, rebuked them for having held intercourse with an excommunicate person, and for speaking of him as emperor after his solemn deposition by apostolical authority. He objected to them as partial judges in the matter, and, with reflections on Frederick as untrustworthy, he gave but little encouragement to his offer to appear in person for the purpose of clearing his orthodoxy. The intercession of King Lewis, and the offers which Frederick made through him—to devote the remainder of his days to the war in the Holy Land, if he might secure absolution for himself and the succession to the empire for his son—were also fruitless, and Lewis made no secret of his indignation and disgust at finding this implacable hardness and pride in one whose business it should have been to unite all Christian princes for the defense of their common faith.

In Germany, the pope had great difficulty in finding any one who would allow himself to be set up as king in rivalry to the Hohenstaufen. At length, however, the offer of the crown was accepted, with much unwillingness, by Henry Raspe, landgrave of Thuringia, a brave warrior, but one whose harshness towards his widowed sister-in-law, the saintly Elizabeth of Hungary, had not prepared men to see him chosen as the special champion of the church. The election was May 22, made almost entirely by the great prelates 1246. of the Rhine, while the lay electors in general held aloof, and Henry was derided as the “clergy’s king”. Supported in part by money from the pope, Henry carried on war with Conrad the son of Frederick, whom he defeated near Frankfort in August 1246. But at a later battle near Ulm, in February 1247, the result was reversed; and Henry withdrew to the Wartburg, where he died of shame and grief. The difficulty of finding an opponent to the Hohenstaufen emperor was now even greater than before. After various attempts in other quarters, William count of Holland, a youth of twenty, was chosen by the Rhenish archbishops and some other electors; but the want of support from the princes made his royalty little more than a shadow, although the pope exerted himself to the utmost in his behalf, and commuted the vow of crusaders for the engagement to fight against Frederick. Aix-la-Chapelle refused to admit the new pretender within its walls, and, although laid under interdict by a cardinal, did  not yield until after Frederick's death, when William at length received the German crown in Charlemagne’s minster; but he was still engaged, as before, in a struggle with Frederick’s son and successor Conrad.

In Italy, the war between the emperor and his enemies was carried on with unrelenting ferocity. Early in 1247, king Enzio hanged one of the pope’s relations who had fallen into his hands; and partly in consequence of this provocation, the pope on Good Friday renewed his excommunication of the emperor in a manner which impressed those who were present with more than the ordinary awe. In order to raise money for the expenses of the struggle, Innocent now openly practiced abuses which at another time would have incurred the heaviest reprobation of the church—excessive taxation of ecclesiastical property, sale of indulgences, relaxation of deserved censures, bestowal of sees without canonical election, and the diversion of money intended for the Holy Land to the purposes of his quarrel with the first prince of Christendom.

Frederick was still desirous of peace, and renewed his offers of terms. He had received the submission of the Milanese, whose city he had vowed to destroy, as his grandfather had done, and was on his way to seek a conference with Innocent at Lyons, when he was recalled by the tidings that an insurrection had broken out at Parma. With a view of reducing the place, he built and fortified a town over against it, which, in the confident anticipation of success, he gave the name of Victoria; and it is said that, in order to strike terror into the besieged, he every day beheaded some of his prisoners in their sight  The  siege lasted nearly seven months, and the Parmesans were reduced to great distress;  but their spirit was unbroken, and after solemn prayers, in which all classes and ages joined, a sally was made against Victoria on Frederick’s birthday. The buildings, mainly composed of wood,   were set on fire; and the emperor, who had been engaged in hawking at some distance, found on his return that Victoria was destroyed, that 1500 of his men were slain, and that the Parmesans had carried off 3000 prisoners, with booty of immense value, including crowns, precious jewels, and his imperial seal. But above all he had to lament the deaths of two of his most valuable adherents, the marquis Lancia and Thaddeus of Sessa; Thaddeus, after having lost both his hands in the fight, was taken prisoner, and, in revenge for the supposed crime of having advised his master to measures of severity, was barbarously hacked to pieces,

PETER DELLE VIGNE

To the loss of these faithful adherents was soon added the treachery of Frederick’s minister and confidant Peter delle Vigne. Peter had not been able to bear his elevation without provoking complaints of his pride, assumption, and rapacity; and it would seem that his sudden and miserable downfall excited more of terror than of pity. The history which is given of this is mysterious and romantic; yet if we hesitate on this account to accept it, we are left without any explanation of his fate. It is said that Peter had been suspected of treachery in holding intercourse with the pope at the council of Lyons, where he had arrived after the sentence of deposition against his master had been pronounced; yet for three years after that council he retained, outwardly at least, the imperial favour. At last, according to the chroniclers, he caught at an opportunity of carrying out his treacherous designs by recommending a physician to the emperor when sick. Frederick, suspecting evil, desired the physician to taste a potion which he had prescribed for him. The physician affected to stumble, and spilt the greater part of the draught; but the remainder was enough to kill a condemned criminal to whom it was administered. The chancellor was arrested at Cremona, where his life was with difficulty saved from the violence of the exasperated people; his eyes were torn out, and in this miserable state he was, by the emperor's order, paraded through several Italian towns. At length it was announced to him that he was to be given up to the Pisans, whom he regarded as his especial enemies; and on hearing this doom, he prevented the execution of it by dashing out his brains against a pillar to which he was chained. Frederick also charged the pope with having instigated his physician to poison him; and in a letter addressed to all princes, he exhorted them to check the ambition of priests who, not content with spiritual power, aimed at engrossing temporal dominion by unscrupulous means.

But of all the calamities which at this time were accumulated on the emperor, that which touched him most deeply was the capture of his illegitimate son Enzio, a handsome, brave, and accomplished youth, to whose valor he had been greatly indebted in the contests of the last years. Enzio fell into the hands of the Bolognese, who refused to yield him up either to threats or to offers of ransom. From the age of twenty-four to that of forty-seven he was kept in the palace of the podestà, in a captivity which, although not severe, was strictly guarded and hopeless; and on his death in 1272, he was buried with honor by the Bolognese in the church which contained the body of St. Dominic.

The emperor was sick both in body and in mind. He suspected all men; his temper became more violent than before; and the cruelty which he may be said to have inherited from his father, was more and more displayed in the treatment of such enemies as fell into his hands. His illness was aggravated by a stroke of palsy, and on the thirteenth of December 1250 he died at Castel Fiorentino, in the Capitanata, having directed by his last testament that all the rights of the church should be restored, on condition that the church should restore the rights of the empire. On his death-bed he was reconciled to the church, and received the last sacraments from the hands of the archbishop of Palermo; and, agreeably to the directions of his will, his body was laid beside those of his parents in the cathedral of that city, to which he had left a large bequest.

Of Frederick’s character something has been already said, and little need be here added.  The writers in the papal interest have painted him, as its resolute and persevering enemy, in the darkest colors; yet even they are obliged to admit that he was a man of high talents, of many graces and accomplishments, endowed with an irresistible charm of manner, a patron of learning and of all liberal arts, and that “if he had been a good catholic he would have had few equals among sovereigns”. On the other hand, although there can be little doubt that his religious opinions have been misrepresented by his enemies, it seems certain that he indulged in a dangerous laxity of belief and levity of expression; and the facts of his life bear out in great measure the charges which are made against him, of excessive licentiousness, of cruelty, cunning, treachery, and falsehood. It is said that his favor could not be relied on, but was rather a token of eventual ruin, and that in such cases he did not scruple to employ feigned accusations against his victims; but, if this may seem to be countenanced by the fate of Peter delle Vigne, we must remember that the emperor retained to the last the warm affection and the zealous service of men so highly respected by their contemporaries as Thaddeus of Sessa, Herman of Salza, and Berardo, arch bishop of Palermo.

In his great struggle with the papacy, Frederick, notwithstanding the calamities of his last days, had not to undergo any such humiliation as the appearance of Henry IV before Gregory VII at Canossa, or the submission of his own grandfather Barbarossa to Alexander III; he was not guilty of any such acts of violence as that which Henry V committed in the seizure of pope Paschal; and he avoided the error of setting up an antipope in opposition to the popes who ineffectually declared him to be deposed and charged all Christians to avoid him. He regarded the struggle as one of principle, as involving the rights of all Christian princes and in this he was justified by the extravagant language and by the violent acts of Gregory IX and Innocent IV. In taking up the cause of “the boy of Sicily” as a claimant of the German kingdom and of the empire, Innocent III committed a mistake like that which Henry V of Germany had made as to Adalbert of Mayence, or that which Henry II of England had made in the promotion of Becket. Instead of a pliant tool, the pope and his successors found in Frederick a man who was strongly convinced of the imperial rights and believed them to be incompatible with the pretensions of the papacy. When the knowledge of their mistake had been forced on them, they attempted to hold him to the fulfillment of his crusading vow, in disregard of all his political and personal interests. They throughout treated his excuses, however reasonable, as mere pretenses; they thwarted him in his expedition to the Holy Land, misrepresented his proceedings there, invaded his territories while he was engaged in the cause of the cross, employed the most unmeasured calumnies against him, and circulated these by the agency of the friars, which penetrated to all places and to every class of society; and they had recourse to the extreme measures of declaring him excommunicate and deposed, of releasing his subjects from allegiance, and of setting up pretenders to his throne. Whatever, therefore, the faults of Frederick’s character may have been—however he may have erred in some of his measures of resistance to the papal policy—we can hardly refuse him, in the main, our sympathy in his contest with Rome, unless we be prepared to admit a theory which would make all power, both religious and secular, centre in the papacy alone.

Frederick by his will appointed Conrad, his son by Iolanthe, heir both of the empire and of the Sicilian kingdom, and directed that Manfred, the child of a connection with a daughter of the marquis Lancia, should in Conrad’s absence be governor of Sicily and Italy. Innocent wrote to the Germans that, although Herod was dead, Archelaus his son reigned in his stead. He renewed the excommunication of Conrad, and, not content with supporting William of Holland in his pretensions to the crown, endeavored even to deprive Conrad of the hereditary dukedom of Swabia by declaring that any one was at liberty to seize his lands. A frightful scene of confusion followed, every one being intent on his own selfish objects, with an entire disregard of all patriotic feeling. The primate, Christian of Mayence, was deposed by a legate for refusing to take part in the crusade against the Hohenstaufen, and it was in vain that he appealed to those canons of the church by which ecclesiastics were forbidden to fight.

The pope was bent on setting up a rival to Conrad in the southern kingdom as well as in Germany. After an unsuccessful attempt to make use of Henry, the son of Frederick by his English wife, Isabella, overtures were made to Charles of Anjou, brother of king Lewis of France. But at this time the pope was unpopular with the French, who attributed in part to his implacable enmity against Frederick the disasters which had made their king a captive in the East. The friars who were commissioned to preach a crusade against Conrad were forbidden to exercise their office in France, and the queen-mother, Blanche, is reported to have said that those who served the pope in war ought to be maintained by the pope. Charles of Anjou, therefore, was not as yet ready to accept the offered crown, and Innocent next applied to Richard, earl of Cornwall, brother of Henry III, a prince who had won fame as a crusader and was reputed to be very wealthy. But Richard was not to be dazzled by an offer which he declared to be much as if the pope should profess to give him the moon, with leave to climb up and get possession of it for himself. The weak Henry, however, was captivated by the idea of acquiring a new crown for his family, and eagerly closed with, if he did not even solicit, an offer of the Sicilian kingdom for his son Edmund, then only nine years old. He gave the boy the royal title, displayed him before the assembled parliament and elsewhere as king of Sicily, laid heavy taxes on his subjects in order to defray the expenses of the war against Conrad, borrowed money from his brother Richard and from the Jews, and authorized the pope to raise a loan on the security of the English crown.

The pope, on hearing of Frederick’s death, had resolved to return to Italy. He left Lyons on the 16th of April 1251, in company with William of Holland, who had visited him there and, after passing through Genoa and Milan, arrived at Perugia, from whence, after a stay of some months, he removed to Assisi in the spring of 1252. The Romans, in somewhat rude terms, reminded him that he was pope of Rome, not of any provincial town; and in consequence of a second invitation, even less courteous than the first, he returned, apparently in the beginning of 1254, to his own city. But, although he was received with honor, he found much difficulty in appeasing the clamors of his people, who demanded compensation for the losses which they had sustained through the long absence of their sovereign pastor.

Conrad in the meantime crossed the Alps, and made his way by the Adriatic to Siponto, where he was received by Manfred.  It was in vain  that he offered to make peace with the church by giving up to it all that it had ever possessed, and that he attempted to clear himself from the charges which the pope accumulated in reckless profusion against him. His arms, however, had considerable success, and after a siege of four months he was able to reduce the city of Naples, where he  treated his vanquished enemies with a severity which recalled the memory of his father and of his grandfather.  But his career was cut short by death, at the age of twenty-six, on the 20th of May 1254; and as the papal party ascribed the death of his brother Henry, in the preceding year, to Conrad, and that of Conrad to Manfred, so the opposite party attributed both to the machinations of the pope.

Conrad left no other child than a boy of two years old, who bore his father’s name, but is more commonly known by the diminutive Conradin. The guardianship of the young prince had been given to Berthold, marquis of Hohenburg; but Berthold soon found himself in such difficulties that he was fain to request the assistance of Manfred, who reluctantly accepted the regency. On hearing of this, the pope denounced both Berthold and Manfred; he declared the Sicilian kingdom to have lapsed to the Roman church, and would not allow Conradin any other titles than the dukedom of Swabia and the shadowy royalty of Jerusalem. After a time, Manfred appeared to have made a somewhat more favorable impression, so that he was not only released from his excommunication, and allowed to hold the pope's bridle as he crossed the Garigliano, which formed the boundary of the Apulian territory; but Innocent, notwithstanding his own engagements to England, gave him the principality of Taranto, and appointed him lieutenant over some part of the kingdom. But soon after this a nobleman named Borello, who had always been troublesome and insolent to Manfred, was slain through mistake by the prince's soldiers, and Manfred felt himself in the greatest danger, as being held accountable for the act. He offered to undergo an investigation before the pope, on condition of receiving a safe conduct; but no satisfactory answer was returned. Berthold, whether from faithlessness or from timidity, had turned against him, and Manfred’s condition appeared to be desperate if he remained within reach of his enemies. He therefore resolved to save himself by flight, and, after many adventures and dangers, he reached Luceria, which was garrisoned by Saracens and Germans. By these adherents of his family he was received with enthusiasm; the treasures which his predecessors had laid up within the strong fortress supplied him with money, and he soon found himself in a condition to cope with and to overthrow the forces of Berthold and the pope.

Innocent continued his progress towards the south, meeting with a welcome from the people, who were tired of Saracen and German rule, until on the 27th of October he entered Naples. Thus far his policy had been almost everywhere triumphant; but the tidings of Manfred’s victory at Foggia, on the 2nd of December, proved fatal to him, and five days after that battle he died. It is said by a Guelfic chronicler that in his last hours he often repeated the penitential words, “Thou, Lord, with rebukes hast chastened man for sin”. A story of different character is told by Matthew Paris—that, as the pope lay on his death-bed, surrounded by his weeping relations, he roused himself to rebuke them by asking “Why do you cry, wretches? Have I not made you all rich?”

At Rome the pope had not been able to establish his temporal government. In 1252 the citizens chose as their senator for three years a Bolognese nobleman of Ghibelline family, named Brancaleone degli Andolò, who by his severe justice, and by the vigor which he showed in demolishing the strongholds of the nobles within the city, reduced it to quietness and order. But his impartiality and strictness gave offence to the great families, by whom he was seized and imprisoned at the expiration of the term for which he had stipulated that his office should last; and he owed his life to the foresight with which he had required, before accepting the senatorship, that thirty noble Roman youths should be delivered to the Bolognese as hostages. On his arrest, his wife hurried to Bologna, where the hostages were committed to prison by way of retaliation; and when the pope interdicted Bologna, the citizens, instead of surrendering the hostages, replied by imprisoning two of his near relations. After a time Brancaleone was released, and was recalled to Rome, where he resumed the stern policy of his earlier days. It seemed as if the Roman republic were restored in its independence; Brancaleone entered into friendly relations with Manfred, and his strong remonstrances compelled Innocent's successor, Alexander, who had retired to Anagni, to return to the capital. A second overthrow of Brancaleone was followed by a second restoration; and on his death, in 1258, of an illness caught at the siege of Corneto, the Romans showed their veneration for him by enclosing his head in a precious vase, which was placed on the top of a column, and by electing one of his kinsmen in his room.

2

ENGLAND—PAPAL EXACTIONS.

Henry III of England had been left by his father to the guardianship of the pope and the Roman church; and in his early years the legate, Gualo, although not unmindful of his own interest, discharged this office well, until, in 1218, he was succeeded by Pandulf, then bishop of Norwich. But the kingdom was to pay dearly for the benefits which the papacy had conferred on its sovereign. The exactions of Rome in this age far exceeded anything that had before been known, and England was the country on which they lay heaviest. In addition to the Peter’s pence of former times, and to the tribute promised by the late king, demands of money to a large amount were continually made under pretense of crusades; and monks and clergy joined with the laity in complaining that the sums thus wrung from them were often spent, not on any attempt to deliver the Holy Land from the infidels, but in the quarrels of popes with Christian princes at home. The system of provisions was carried to a great length by Gregory IX, and still further by Innocent IV. It was complained by the English that the benefices possessed by foreigners amounted to 70,000 marks yearly—more than thrice the revenue of the crown; and that these foreign incumbents performed no duties of residence, hospitality, or pastoral care. The legates and other emissaries of the pope very commonly added to the dislike which necessarily attached to their office by their arrogance, ostentation, and personal rapacity;  and the people were fleeced yet more through the arts of the Caursins or money-lenders, who, although their trade was in direct defiance of the church’s canons, now settled in England under the title of “papal merchants”.

The English were not passive under these oppressions, which produced a general disaffection to the papacy. The clergy and the national parliaments often remonstrated; an English deputation, as we have seen, presented a representation of grievances to Innocent at the council of Lyons; and in the following year the bishops of the province of Canterbury sent him an entreaty that he would abstain from continuing a system which the English declared to be more intolerable than death itself. Sometimes the resistance took a more violent form. Messengers from the pope were beaten or killed; foreign ecclesiastics were attacked when travelling, or their houses and granaries were set on fire; and such deeds were traced to an association formed for the purpose, whose proceedings were supposed to be even connived at by persons in authority. The chief of this association, who styled himself William Wither, on finding himself hardly pressed, avowed himself to the king as Robert of Twenge, a Yorkshire knight. He was sent by Henry to Rome, with a representation of the church’s complaints, but was obliged to content himself with the redress of his own especial grievance, the invasion of a parish in his gift by a papal nominee.

The king sometimes took part with his subjects in resisting the oppressions from which they suffered; more commonly he stood helpless between the two parties, or weakly succumbed to the fear of Rome. The popes were indifferent to all the misgovernment of England, whether in church or in state, provided that they could extort money from the people.

The old evil of long vacancies in sees was unabated, and the contests as to the appointment of prelates were frequently renewed. Royal nomination clashed with capitular election, and both were in many cases forced to give way to the papal despotism which conferred the disputed see on a nominee of its own. Thus, when the primacy of Canterbury was vacant in 1231, Gregory IX set aside three persons who had been elected to it in succession, and at last desired the Canterbury monks who had been sent to him as representatives of their brethren, to elect Edmund Rich, treasurer of Sarum. The archbishop thus appointed was an honest and single-minded man, greatly revered for his sanctity and learning; but he soon found himself involved in troubles with the court, with the legate, who overruled his sentences, with the monks of his own cathedral, and with those of Rochester, which rendered his position intolerable. He therefore resolved to carry his difficulties to the pope; but Gregory, although he heard him favorably, was afraid to give him any substantial aid, and Edmund, finding on his return to England that his opponents were too strong for him, withdrew to Pontigny, where his predecessors Thomas Becket and Stephen Langton had formerly found a refuge. After his death, which took place in 1240 pope was requested to canonize him on account of his sanctity, and many miracles were alleged in support of the petition. Some delay was occasioned by the influence of those who had opposed the archbishop during his lifetime; but he was enrolled in the catalogue of saints by Innocent IV in 1246.

A.D. 1216-54. ABP.  BONIFACE. GROSSETETE.

The successor of Edmund, chosen by the monks in accordance with the king’s wishes, was Boniface, a young prince of Savoy and uncle of the queen. Boniface, finding his church in debt, made this a pretext for spending the first six years of his archiepiscopate abroad, impoverishing his see while he enriched himself by cutting down the woods on the estates, and, although the pope allowed him to add to the primacy of England the administration of the bishopric of Valence, devoting himself chiefly to warlike occupations. When he reappeared in England, his arrogance, assumption and violent temper, which were especially displayed in a visitation of his province, produced a general feeling of indignation; and at length, after having gathered all the money that he could collect by dilapidating his see and exhausting its tenants, he withdrew to his native country, where the revenues of the English primacy were spent in maintaining the political interests of his family.

Among the English prelates of this time, Robert Grossetete was especially distinguished both for his learning and for his pastoral labors. Grossetete was born in Suffolk about the year 1175, and, after having studied at Oxford and Paris, became bishop of Lincoln in 1235. His acquaintance with the ancient tongues is said to have included not only Greek (which he studied under a native Greek named Nicolas),but Hebrew; and, as in other cases, his learning drew on him from some of his contemporaries the suspicion of magic. In his episcopal office, Grossetete displayed an indefatigable activity, with an earnest and somewhat intolerant zeal for the reformation of his own flock and of the church at large. In him the new orders found a hearty patron; he employed them in his vast diocese, as instruments for reaching those classes which were neglected by the secular clergy; and in the university of Oxford, of which he was chancellor, his favor encouraged them as teachers. Yet the especial principle of these orders was not unreservedly approved by him; for we are told that, after having cried up mendicancy as the highest step of the ladder which leads to heaven, he added privately that there is one step yet higher—namely, to live by the labor of one’s own hands. And it is said that in his last days he strongly reprobated the change by which the friars, instead of being censors of the great, had become their flatterers.

Among the evils against which Grossetete struggled were the rapacity of the Roman court, the abuse of indulgences, the bestowal of patronage on unfit and undeserving persons, the employment of ecclesiastics in secular business; the subjection of the clergy to secular tribunals (for as to this he held the principles of Becket), the admission of persons who were not priests to benefices, the marriage and concubinage of the clergy. He remonstrated very strongly against the presentation of one of the pope’s near relations, a boy who knew nothing of English, to a canonry of Lincoln; and when archbishop Boniface had insisted on testing the fitness of Robert de Passelewe, a favorite of the king, whom the chapter of Chichester had been persuaded to elect as bishop, Grossetete undertook the part of examiner, and set him aside on the ground of ignorance. That a man so impetuous and even imprudent, so zealous, active, fearless and unsparing, should have made many enemies, was natural. He was deeply involved in quarrels with the dean and chapter of his cathedral, who questioned his right of visitation; with monks and clergy, with Templars and Hospitallers, with some of the laity, whose morals he searched into with a scrutiny which Matthew Paris censures as inexpedient, and which was checked by a prohibition from the king. In political affairs, he allied himself with the party opposed to the foreign influence which prevailed at court; he was tutor to the sons of the younger Simon de Montfort, and is said to have counseled the earl that the English church could not be saved except by the material sword. By his opposition to the abuses of the papal system he excited the strong dislike of Innocent, who treated him with slight on his going to Lyons in 1250, and, although miracles were reported in connection with the bishop’s 1253. death, is said to have intended that his body should be cast out of the cathedral, in which it was buried. But Grossetete appeared to the pope by night, arrayed in full pontificals, and, driving his pastoral staff into Innocent’s side, so that he cried out for pain, declared himself to be exempt from his power. After that terrible vision, it is added, the pope never was well again. Yet Grossetete, notwithstanding his violent collisions with the papacy, was not a reformer in the sense of the sixteenth century. He adhered to the strictest orthodoxy of his time; his views of reformation extended only to the discipline and administration of the church; and, while he did not hesitate to speak of an individual pope as antichrist on account of his blamable actions, he very strongly held a high view of the papacy, from which and through which he considered that all bishops must derive their commission and their spiritual power.

3

ALBIGENSIAN WAR.

Although the Lateran council had decided against the counts of Toulouse, the younger Raymond was determined to regain, if possible, the territories of which his father had been deprived. On returning from the council, he was received with great enthusiasm at Avignon. A general abhorrence had been excited by the severities of the crusaders; nobles, knights, soldiers, flocked to his standard; even Marseilles, which had never acknowledged the lordship of his family, now offered him its keys. It was in vain that pope Honorius endeavored to discountenance the enterprise; war was again commenced, and Raymond gained some successes, even against Simon de Montfort himself. Simon, although hardly pressed, resolved to attempt the capture of Toulouse before abandoning the country; and, after having for some time besieged it, he reduced the inhabitants to sue for mercy, which his brother Guy and others advised him to grant. The bishop, Fulk, entered the city, and persuaded the people to go out to the besieger’s camp in the hope of appeasing his anger; but one party after another, as they reached the camp, were seized and hanged. Reports of this treachery were speedily carried into the city by fugitives, and an immediate rising took place. Fulk was driven to save himself by flight, there was long and furious fighting in the streets, and at length Simon gave orders that the houses should be set on fire. The bishop afterwards proposed that the defenders should place themselves at De Montfort’s mercy, on receiving a solemn guarantee by oath for the safety of their persons and property. But when this promise had served its purpose, it was broken; the churches were spared, but the fortified houses and other chief buildings were demolished, and the inhabitants had to pay excessive taxation as the price of what was left to them. Soon after this the citizens, taking advantage of Simon’s absence, again rose in revolt, in concert with count Raymond, and endeavored to restore their fortifications. The news of this insurrection reached Simon on the east of the Rhone, and he immediately set off on horseback, swearing by the holy chrism of his baptism that he would keep up the siege until he should either be victorious or perish. He himself remained before Toulouse throughout the winter, while bishop Fulk and others were actively recruiting for him in northern France, and the besieged were strengthened by assistance from Provence and from Spain. The campaign of 1218 was opened with increased vigor on both sides, and on the 25th of June a grand assault was made on the city. As Simon was at mass, he was informed that an engine, on which he had greatly relied, had been attacked by a sallying party of the besieged; but he refused to go forth until the end of the sacred office. In the fight which ensued, his brother Guy’s horse was pierced by an arrow, and Guy himself, as he fell, was severely wounded by another arrow. On seeing this, Simon dismounted, and rushed to his brother; and, while bending over him, and endeavoring to utter words of comfort, he was slain by a stone from a mangonel. The crusaders, disheartened by the fall of their great leader, immediately raised the siege, and withdrew from the country, pursued by the exasperated people.

Pope Honorius, notwithstanding the younger Raymond’s professions of orthodoxy, and his offer to give satisfaction on all points, felt himself bound to carry out the policy of Innocent as to southern France. He took up the cause of Amaury de Montfort, the son of Simon, encouraged the raising of troops by the offer of indulgences for crimes to those who should take part in the expedition, allowed a part of the funds raised for the Holy Land to be applied to the Albigensian war, and founded in 1221 a military order “of the Holy Faith” for the purpose of fighting against the heretics. In the meantime the cathari, who had been driven from the country, took encouragement from the death of Simon to return, and the war, from having for some time been a national struggle, took again the character of a crusade for the suppression of heresy. The elder Raymond died in 1222. Although his son offered ample evidence that he had died in the orthodox faith, the legate, to whom the pope referred the question of his Christian burial, decided against him; and for three hundred years his body was kept unburied in the house of the knights Hospitallers at Toulouse.

Attempts were made to draw Philip Augustus into the war of the south. But although Honorius urged him repeatedly, and Amaury de Montfort was willing to make over to the king the rights which he himself was not strong enough to assert  the decay of Philip’s health withheld him from sharing in such an enterprise. At his death, however, which took place in July 1223, he bequeathed a sum of money for the extirpation of heresy in the south, as well as for the holy war in Palestine; and his son, Lewis VIII, took up the cause with zeal. In February 1224, Amaury de Montfort, who had just been driven from Languedoc with the scanty remains of his army, ceded to the king of France the privileges which had been bestowed on his father Simon, and received a promise of the office of constable of France. The attempts of Raymond to save himself from the threatened danger by offering, before a council held by a legate at Bourges in 1225, to submit to the church in everything and to devote himself to the extirpation of heresy, were fruitless. The crusade was actively preached, and in the spring of 1226, Lewis at the head of a vast force set out for the south.   Avignon, which had been faithful to the counts of Toulouse, and for ten years had shared their excommunication, offered him a passage across its bridge, on condition that he should pass on without entering the town; but he angrily rejected this offer, and swore that he would not advance further until he should have reduced the place. A siege was therefore commenced, which lasted from the early part of June to September; and during this time a sickness broke out in the army, which carried off many, and fatally shattered the health of Lewis himself. Avignon was taken, and was condemned to lose its walls, with forty of the best houses; but the king's further progress was unattended with any considerable triumphs. The siege of Toulouse was deferred until a future campaign, and on his return Lewis died at Montpensier, leaving his crown to a son only twelve years old.

The war was continued; Raymond, according to one chronicler, disgraced himself by the barbarities which he committed after a success gained over the invaders in 1228; and perhaps the indignation excited by this impolitic cruelty may have tended to swell the ranks of the crusaders. In 1229, Raymond was glad to conclude a treaty by which a part of his territories was given up at once to France, and provision was made that the rest should eventually devolve to the crown—a treaty which proved that in the estimation of the crusaders the question of territory was more important than that of heresy. Raymond himself was allowed to appear in the dress of a penitent, and received absolution from a legate in the cathedral of Paris on Good Friday. The cession of Amaury de Montfort’s claims was renewed, and in the following year he was rewarded with the promised constableship, which had then become vacant by the death of its holder.

But measures were taken for the suppression of heresy. It was a condition of the treaty with count Raymond that an university should be founded at Toulouse, in order to the counteraction of heretical teaching; and thus the spirit of southern literature was put down by the scholasticism of the north. At a council held at Toulouse in the same year, canons of excessive strictness were enacted—that no one should read the Scriptures in the vernacular tongue (a prohibition of which there had been no earlier example); that no one suspected of heresy should be allowed to practice as a physician, or to have access to the dying; that all male persons from the age of fourteen, and females from the age of twelve, should be required to abjure heresy; that all persons should communicate thrice a year, under pain of being suspected as heretics. Severe disabilities were inflicted on all who should in any way favor heretics; and it was ordered that in every parish two, three, or more laymen of good repute should be sworn to search out all suspicious persons, and to denounce them to the bishop, or to the lord of the place. But this machinery, which was subject to the bishop in each diocese, was shortly after superseded by the Inquisition, which the pope committed into the hands of the Dominicans. In the proceedings of this tribunal, the ordinary rules of judicial fairness were utterly set aside. The names of witnesses were not disclosed; all manner of persons, however criminal or infamous, and even although partakers in the same guilt, were admitted to give evidence, and their evidence was believed against the denials of the accused. The accused were not allowed to benefit by the assistance of advocates or notaries; ensnaring questions were put, and torture was employed to wring out not only avowals of heresy from the accused, but testimony from unwilling witnesses. The dead as well as the living were brought to trial, and were sentenced to be burnt. The iniquitous proceedings and cruelties of the inquisitors soon produced a general exasperation. At Toulouse, Narbonne, Albi, Avignonnet, and other places, the inquisitors were driven out, or even murdered, by the infuriated peopled In order to mitigate this feeling, the pope in 1237 ordered that the less stern Franciscans should be associated with the Dominicans, and from that year to 1241 the inquisition was suspended. The disturbances of Languedoc long continued to break out afresh from time to time, councils renewed their enactments for the detection of heresy, and Raymond in 1234 issued a code of regulations for the same purpose. In the hope of preserving his credit for orthodoxy, the count often found himself compelled to share in acts which he abhorred, while his position was made uneasy by the watchfulness of bishop Fulk and his successor, who were always ready to tax him with lukewarmness in the cause of the church. A fresh insurrection in 1242 ended in his being obliged to throw himself on the mercy of Lewis IX, by whom he was generously treated. The pope, Gregory IX, released him from a crusading vow which he had been compelled to make, and bestowed on him the marquisate of Provence; and in his last years he was much employed in attempts to reconcile Innocent IV with Fredericks Raymond VII died in 1249, having a short time before signalized his orthodoxy by presiding at the execution of eighty “perfect” cathari at Agen.

4

CRUSADE OF LEWIS IX.

In the meantime, Lewis IX of France grew up under the careful guardianship of his mother, Blanche of Castile, who administered the affairs of the kingdom through a time of no ordinary difficulties with signal ability and energy. The strong and stern character of Blanche—in which the love of influence and domination put on the appearance of religious strictness, although even this was not enough to exempt her from the assaults of scandal—maintained its mastery over her son to the end of her life; and her tyranny was remorselessly exercised towards his queen, Margaret of Provence, to whom she married him in 1234. The contrast between Lewis and his contemporary Frederick was very remarkable. While the emperor was skeptical in his opinions and lax in his morals, Lewis was rigorously strict in everything that was regarded as belonging to the saintly character. He daily heard mass, twice at least, on some days three or four times; he attended the canonical hours, and, when informed that his nobles found fault with this, he defended himself by saying that no one would have blamed him if he had spent twice as much time in dicing or hunting. His private devotions were frequent and fervent; every day he read, or caused to be read to him, some portion of the Scriptures with a commentary, and some part of the writings of St. Augustine; every Friday he confessed his sins, and received the discipline from his confessor. He was rigidly ascetic as to food and drink ; he refrained from all worldly sports and pastimes, and, as far as was possible, from the outward pomp of royalty; he was careful as to his language, avoiding all oaths, and enacting severe penalties against the use of them; he diligently exercised himself in acts of charity and pious bounty, and in personal ministrations to the sick, the needy, and the afflicted. He treated the clergy, and especially the new orders of friars, with reverence; he was connected with the Franciscan order as a tertiary, and is reported to have said that, if he could divide himself into two, he would give one half to the Dominicans and the other to the Franciscans. He devoted some of his children to the monastic life, and it is said that he was at one time desirous of entering one of the mendicant orders, when he was dissuaded by his queen’s representation that he would better fulfill his duty by striving as a king to keep his realm in peace, and to benefit the church. His justice was such, that of his own accord he gave up to the English king some territories which had once belonged to England; and from a like motive he caused an inquiry to be made as to the possessions acquired by the crown during the last three reigns, and restored those which had been unjustly obtained. The reputation of this virtue induced Henry III and the insurgent barons of England to choose him as arbiter of their differences. Among the popular superstitions of the age, the reverence for relics was that to which Lewis was especially addicted, and the capture of Constantinople by the Latins enabled him to gratify his taste by acquiring many objects of very high pretensions. To this we are indebted for the beautiful “Holy Chapel” of Paris, which was built by Peter of Montreuil at his expense, and richly endowed by him, for the reception of the crown of thorns, a piece of the true cross, and other memorials of the Saviour’s passion. But when, on his setting out for the crusade, the monks of Pontigny offered to give him a portion of the body of St. Edmund of Canterbury, he replied with characteristic self-denial, “Christ forbid that that which God hath so long preserved in its entireness, should in any way be mutilated by a sinner like me!”

Yet although the religion of Lewis had much in it that must appear to us weak, he was not a slave of the clergy. High as was his regard for the papacy, he had learnt from Scripture lessons of right which enabled him to look above the will of popes. That principle of the equality of clergy and laity before the law of the land, by the assertion of which Henry II of England had provoked the indignation of the hierarchy, and in opposition to which Becket had endured exile and death, was firmly established in France by the saintly king, whose very reverence for the clergy induced him to refuse them immunity from the punishment of crime. He was careful to guard his prerogative against ecclesiastical encroachments; and by his “Pragmatic Sanction”, which will be more particularly noticed hereafter, he laid the foundation of those “liberties” which for centuries were the distinctive privilege of the Gallican church. And while Frederick was engaged in a deadly struggle with the popes, the saintly character and high reputation of Lewis enabled him to assert the royal and the national rights without exciting the opposition of Rome. At home these qualities tended greatly to increase the influence of the crown, and under Lewis the royal territory was extended by important additions, while the example of such a character was more powerful than anything else to win back for religion that respect of mankind which was endangered alike by the skepticism of Frederick and by the gross worldly ambition of his papal opponents.

Lewis held religious error in abhorrence, and believed the use of the sword to be lawful as a means of suppressing it. “No one”, he said, “ought to dispute with Jews unless he be a very good clerk; but the layman, when he heareth the Christian law spoken against, ought not to defend it save with the sword, which he should thrust as far as it will go into the unbeliever’s belly”. Yet while Frederick, by way of vindicating his own orthodoxy, exercised cruel severities against his heretical subjects, it does not appear that Lewis, although he invited the establishment of the Inquisition throughout France, took any part in directing its operations. The persecutions which in the earlier part of his reign were carried on in Languedoc were done without his consent, and it was not in his territory, but in that of his vassal Theobald of Champagne, that one hundred and eighty-three cathari (of whom only one belonged to the class of perfect) were burnt at Montvimer, in 1239, under the authority of Henry, archbishop of Reims.

The popes had always endeavored to keep the idea of a crusade before the eyes of the western nations, but with little effect; indeed, the chief hindrance, to a general armament for the recovery of the Holy Land was to be found in that policy by which they gave the character of a crusade to the wars against the heretics of Languedoc and the pagans of northern Europe, and to their own wars against the Hohenstaufen princes, so that these nearer and less formidable enterprises diverted and dispersed the forces which might otherwise have been combined in the cause of Palestine. From time to time small expeditions were made—as that of Richard of Cornwall, in 1240; but, if the Mussulmans had been united among themselves, they might easily have driven the Christians out of the land. The sultans of Damascus and of Egypt, however, were in bitter hostility to each other, and, while the one allied himself with the Templars, the other entered into a connection with the knights of the hospital. The Templars, in 1243, besieged the Hospitallers in their house at Acre, and, in order to insult the emperor Frederick, they turned the Teutonic order out of their possessions, to the weakening of the Christian cause and to the encouragement of the infidels.

Soon after this, however, a new power appeared on the scene. The Chorasmians, who had gained possession of Persia, were driven from that country by the advance of the Mongols, and their barbarous hordes poured into Syria and the Holy Land. In September 1244, Jerusalem fell into their hands. A great slaughter of the inhabitants took place; the churches were robbed of their ornaments, the holy sepulchre and the royal tombs were violated; places and things which the Saracens had respected, either from a common feeling of their sanctity or in observance of conventions with the Christians, were now exposed to brutal profanation.  The Christians, when it was too late, allied themselves with the Moslems against this new enemy, but their joint forces were defeated with great loss in October and urgent requests for help, such as had been only too frequent on former occasions, were sent to the west, and the subject of a crusade was discussed at the council of Lyons. But in answer to the proposal of a contribution, it was said that the misappropriation of money collected under the pretext of a crusade had produced a general distrust; and when preachers were sent to stir up the western nations for the holy cause, they met in many quarters with no favorable response. The Christians of Spain were, as at other times, engaged with their own Moorish neighbours; Germany and Italy were distracted by the disputes between the emperor and the pope; and when the bishop of Beyrout visited England, he was told by king Henry that, after having been so often deceived in such matters, the English would not join in the undertaking. “The king of France may go”, said Henry; “for his people will follow him; but I am uneasy as to the French, the Scots, and the Welsh, and the pope protects those who rise against me”

In the autumn of 1244, while Innocent IV was on his way from Sutri to Lyons, Lewis fell dangerously ill at Pontoise. The most urgent means of intercession were used in his behalf; sacred relics were exposed, in the hope of adding fervency to the prayers of the faithful; but recovery seemed to be hopeless. At length, after the king had been long speechless, and was even supposed by some of his attendants to be already dead, he sent for the bishop of Paris, and asked that the cross might be given to him. From that hour he recovered; but when he spoke of the engagement which he had contracted to the crusade, his wife and mother, with other advisers both secular and spiritual—even the bishop himself, the famous schoolman William of Auvergne—endeavored to dissuade him from the enterprise by urging that his duties to his kingdom required him to stay at home: that the promise, made when he was not fully master of himself, was not to be regarded as binding; and that he might help the holy war as effectually by sending troops to the east as by going in person. Lewis, however, adhered to his resolution, nor was it shaken by the discovery that he must expect but little cooperation from other countries, and that even among his own subjects his zeal met with little sympathy.

It was the custom of sovereigns at high festivals to bestow dresses on their courtiers; and on Christmas-day, when a solemn service was to be held at the “holy chapel” before daybreak, Lewis caused a number of garments to be distributed among the nobles who were in attendance on him. On passing from the dimness without into the fully-lighted chapel, the receivers were astonished to find that these garments were marked with the cross, so that, according to the ideas of that time, they had unwittingly bound themselves to the holy war, and it was impossible to draw back. The preparations for a crusade were therefore actively carried on, and on the 12th of June 1248, the king, having settled a regency, of which his mother was the head, took the oriflamme from the altar of St. Denys, and set out on the expedition. From that time he laid aside all the ensigns of royalty, and all luxury of dress; and, as he went along, he visited the chief monasteries which lay in his way, edifying the inmates by his piety and self-denial, and entreating the assistance of their prayers. At Lyons he had interviews with the pope, whose quarrel with the emperor he had found to be the great obstacle to the crusade; and he was deeply grieved and disgusted at finding that he was unable to produce any effect by exhorting him to peace for the general sake of Christendom. But, notwithstanding these feelings as to Innocent, he showed his reverence for the papal office by confessing his sins to him very minutely, and devoutly receiving his absolution.

From Aigues Mortes—his only Mediterranean port, which he had done much to improve—Lewis sailed to Cyprus, which had been chosen as the place of meeting for the expedition; and from the irregularity with which his recruits arrived, it was found necessary to remain there for the winter. During this time many of the crusaders sickened and died, and the army would have been in great distress for provisions, had it not been largely relieved by the friendship or policy of the excommunicated emperor. The empress of Constantinople, a daughter of John of Brienne, arrived to solicit the king’s aid for the sinking power of the Latins; but Lewis, although he expressed a hearty sympathy with her misfortunes, would not be diverted from the proper object of his expedition. An embassy also appeared in the name of the khan of the Mongols, who was represented as offering his alliance, and as professing to have derived a favorable disposition towards Christianity from a Christian mother. Lewis received the ambassadors with courtesy, and dismissed them with gifts for their master; but in the event it appeared as if they had acted without authority, and the communication with the khan led to no result.

On the 19th of May 1249, the crusading force set sail for Damietta, where it effected a landing on June 5th. The city was taken with ease, as the defenders deserted it by night; but this was almost the only success which the crusaders had to boast. The remembrance of the misfortunes endured by the former expedition to Egypt, and the necessity of waiting for their companions, who had been scattered by a violent storm, and for other expected accessions, delayed their advance until the rising of the Nile should have subsided; and thus the enemy had time to recover from the first alarm produced by the invasion, while the inaction of the army resulted in a general demoralization, so that the camp of the saintly king became full of gross and open profligacy. At length, on the 20th of November, the advance towards Cairo was commenced; but it proved to be a series of disasters. In a battle near Mansurah Lewis was victorious; but he had to mourn the loss of his brother Robert of Artois, of the earl of Salisbury with almost all his English followers, and of a great number of other soldiers, including many knights of the religious-military orders. Pestilence and famine began to do their work on the Franks, and it soon became evident that the conquest of Egypt was hopeless. The sultan’s offer of Palestine in exchange for Damietta had before been refused; but when it was now proposed by the Christians to exchange Damietta for Jerusalem alone, the sultan declared that Lewis must become a hostage for the performance of the bargain. The distress increased; the Christians found themselves reduced to eat their horses, disregarding the prohibitions of Lent; their fleet was destroyed; the Saracens surrounded the army in vast numbers; the sluices of the river were opened with fatal effect; many crusaders apostatized; and Lewis himself was so ill that his life was in danger. Against such difficulties and perils he found it impossible to struggle any longer, and on the 8th of April he surrendered to the mercy of the Saracens.

But even in captivity his dignified and saintly bearing, and the constancy with which he performed his devotions, impressed the Mussulmans with reverence. The sultan, Turan-shah, to whom he had become prisoner, was assassinated, in revenge for some slights by which he had provoked his Turkish Mamelukes, and the murderers, rushing into the presence of Lewis with their bloody weapons in their hands, asked what he would give them for having delivered him from an enemy who had intended to put him to death. Their leader is said to have demanded of him the degree of knighthood, to which the king answered that it could not be conferred, unless on condition of his becoming a Christian. Finding that he was unmoved by their threats, it is said that the infidels thought of choosing the king himself to fill the vacant throne.

The dealings for ransom were difficult, and the collection of the money was slow; and in the meantime the Saracens got rid of many of their prisoners, especially the sick, by killing them in cold blood and throwing their bodies into the Nile. Lewis, with characteristic integrity, refused to enter into any arrangement for his own liberation, unless it should include all his companions  he refused to leave his captivity until the covenanted sum was made up, although the means of doing so were offered to him; and when some of his followers boasted that in paying the ransom they had put a trick on the enemy, he indignantly ordered that the deceit should be amended. The new sultan, struck with his behavior, voluntarily remitted a large portion of the ransom; but Damietta, the sole conquest which the Christians had made, was to be given up. The Saracens stipulated that, if they should fail in performing their part of the treaty, they would abjure the religion of Islam, and wished the king to bind himself by a similar oath, that in case of failure as to his engagements he should be disgraced as a renegade, “as one who spits and tramples on the cross”; but he refused with horror to admit such words even by way of supposition.

On recovering his liberty, Lewis sailed for Acre, and there rejoined his queen, who had left Damietta after having given birth to a son, to whom she gave the ominous name of Tristan. The king resolved to remain in the Holy Land in order to watch over the execution of the treaty by the Saracens; he repaired the fortifications of Acre, Sidon, Caesarea, and other places which were still in possession of the Christians, and endeavored to reconcile their divisions. But although he ardently desired to see Jerusalem, and although the sultan of Damascus was willing to permit him, he refrained out of deference to the suggestion of his counselors, that, if the first of Christian kings were to visit the holy city without delivering it from the infidels, the desire to deliver it would die away among Christians. The only gratification, therefore, which he allowed himself was a pilgrimage to Nazareth, which he performed with deep devotion.

Innocent IV wrote from Lyons a letter of consolation to the king, and ordered that prayers should be put up throughout France for his deliverance. But the pope’s conduct in stirring up war at home, while the champion of the cross was in captivity—in diverting to a crusade against Frederick and Conrad the money which should have served for the ransom of Lewis, and the forces which might have delivered him—produced a strong feeling of indignation, which became more vehement as it penetrated deeper into the lower ranks of society. And out of this feeling grew a strange movement, beginning in the north of France among some shepherds and others of the poorest class, who styled themselves Pastoureaux. These professed to have for their object the deliverance of the king, and to believe that that which other means had failed to effect would be granted to their simplicity. As they went along, their numbers swelled, and among the recruits were many lawless ruffians, who were bent on profiting by the enthusiasm of the time. At their head was a mysterious personage about sixty years of age, who spoke French, German, and Latin. This personage was styled the Master of Hungary—a title which would seem to indicate a connection with the Manicheans about the Danube; but wonderful stories were told of him—that he possessed a charm which irresistibly drew all men to follow him that he was an apostate Cistercian monk; that he was the same who forty years before had been the leader of the children’s crusade; that he was a Mahometan and a sorcerer, who had engaged for a certain price to deliver a multitude of Christians into the hands of the sultan of Babylon.

On reaching the capital, the Pastoureaux were favorably treated by the queen-mother, who admitted their chief to an interview with her, and bestowed presents on them; but even at Paris they began to display the real character of the movement, and as they proceeded further towards the south it became more and more manifest. They abused, assaulted, and even killed clergy and especially friars; they vented wild and blasphemous doctrines, and usurped priestly functions—the master of Hungary appearing with a mitre on his head. At Orleans, as the master was preaching, he was interrupted by a student of the university, who told him that he was a heretic and a deceiver. The student’s skull was immediately cleft by one of the fanatics; a general attack was made on the clergy; and a tumult arose which was attended with much slaughter on both sides. The bishop interdicted the city, and the queen-mother, on being informed of these scenes, withdrew her protection from the pastoureaux. At Bourges they pillaged the synagogue and the houses of the Jews, and committed great outrages of other kinds, which provoked the inhabitants to rise against them and drive them out of the town. The master of Hungary was pursued and slain, and many of his followers were hanged. Some of the party straggled on to Bordeaux, but Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester, who commanded there for the king of England, refused to admit them into the town, and compelled them by threats to withdraw from the neighborhood. Many of them were drowned in the Gironde. Another division made for Marseilles, where they arrived with numbers greatly reduced. Some of them were hanged and the rest dispersed, and thus this movement came to an end.

Blanche had often urged her son to return from the East, on the ground that a man was needed for the conduct of the government. A war broke out with Flanders, in which the French suffered severely; and on the 1st of March 1252, the queen-mother died, leaving the regency in the hands of her sons Charles, count of Anjou, and Alphonsus. Lewis was deeply affected by the news of her death; and, after having consulted his advisers, he resolved to return home. A few days after Easter 1254 he embarked at Acre. His vessel was furnished with a chapel in which the canonical hours were regularly performed; there were three sermons weekly, and a course of religious instruction was established for the sailors, whose lack of opportunities for learning had excited the king’s compassion. After a stormy voyage of ten weeks, Lewis landed at Hyeres, and on the 7th of September he reached Paris, after an absence of more than six years. All who saw him were struck with the appearance of profound grief and dejection which he wore. He had lost much, while he had gained nothing for Christendom; he had failed in a manner which would have been ignominious but for the saintly virtue and the patient courage which he had displayed throughout his reverses and sufferings. He ascribed to his own sinfulness the disasters which had befallen the Christian force; and he did not consider his crusading vow to have been fulfilled by the expedition which had cost him so dear.

CHAPTER III

FROM THE ELECTION OF POPE ALEXANDER IV TO THE DEATH OF LEWIS IX OF FRANCE. A.D. 1254-1270.

The successor of Innocent IV was Reginald, bishop of Ostia, a member of the Franciscan order, and nephew of Gregory IX. He took the name of Alexander IV, and began his pontificate by issuing a circular letter to all bishops, in which he requested the benefit of their prayers; but the favorable expectations which this produced were somewhat disappointed by the sequel of his pontificate. Alexander, although he wished to follow the same policy as his predecessor, was far inferior to Innocent in ability, and without his strength of character; and while he is praised for his piety and for his kindly disposition, he is said to have been a dupe of flatterers, and a tool of those who made the Roman court odious by their rapacity and extortion.

Manfred, a prince of great talents and brilliant accomplishments, was able, by his political skill and by the popular graces of his character, to extend his influence, and in this he was the more readily successful, because, unlike his Hohenstaufen ancestors, he did not rely on the arms of the Germans, who were more hated by the Italians than even the infidel Saracens. Within two years he regained for his nephew Conradin the kingdom of Apulia and Sicily, having been urged on to make himself master of the whole by the pope’s refusal to ratify a treaty which proposed a division of the territory. A cry arose that he should be king, and about the same time a report was spread that Conradin had died in Germany. Manfred, without closely inquiring into the truth of this report (of which, indeed, his enemies suppose him to have been the inventor), resolved to accept the dignity which was pressed on him, and on the nth of August 1258 he was crowned at Palermo. In answer to a remonstrance from Conradin’s mother, he told her envoys that he held the kingdom by a personal title—by the success of his arms and the choice of his people; that it would be inexpedient to endanger the Hohenstaufen interest by leaving it in the hands of women and children; but that, as he himself had no other heir, he would gladly make Conradin his successor: and he invited him to the Sicilian court, in order that he might prepare himself for the duties of royalty by acquiring the manners of his future subjects and by gaining their affection. In the meantime, he took strong measures against all who professed to adhere to the cause of Conradin.

The pope endeavored to carry out his predecessor’s scheme for establishing the English prince Edmund on the throne of Sicily, and in 1255 the boy was formally invested in the kingdom by a bishop who had been sent to England for the purpose. But the English were shocked at finding that a crusade was preached against Manfred with the offer of the same indulgences and immunities as the enterprise of delivering the Holy Land from the Saracens, while the Holy Land itself was neglected in its urgent need; nay, that the money which was so largely extorted from them under the pretense of a crusade, was not even spent for Edmund’s interest, but was diverted to the pope’s own secular purposes. A strong opposition arose, both in parliament and throughout the country, to the exactions of the papal collector, Rostand; and the pope, on making complaints of Henry’s supineness in the affair, and of his backwardness in supplying money found that the source on which he had mainly relied for the supply of his exigencies was likely to dry up. In alarm at this prospect, he made overtures to Manfred, whom he had before excommunicated and declared to be deprived not only of the Sicilian kingdom but of the principality of Taranto; but the negotiation was ended by Manfred’s refusing to dismiss his Saracen soldiery, and declaring, in answer to the proposal, that he would fetch as many more from Africa. Manfred had taken into his own hands the appointment of archbishops and bishops. The goodness of his administration won for him a strength which enabled him to defy the papal censures; and in order to counteract the money which the pope extorted from the English clergy, he held himself at liberty to supply his needs by invading the property of churches and monasteries.

In Germany, William of Holland became lawful king by the death of Conrad, nor during the short remainder of his life was he opposed by any rival; although, when invited by the pope to repair to Rome for coronation as emperor, he found himself neither strong enough nor rich enough to undertake the expedition. By his death in a battle against the Frisians, in 1256, the kingdom was again vacant. The claims of Conradin were peremptorily set aside by the pope, who wrote to the ecclesiastical electors, dilating on the misdeeds of the Swabian family, and forbidding them under pain of excommunication to choose the boy, whose age he also represented as a personal disqualification. The idea of a real kingship had died out among the princes of Germany, so that each of them was intent on promoting his own interests by weakening the power of the crown. A foreigner, therefore, appeared preferable to a native prince; and while one party, headed by the archbishops of Mayence and Cologne, chose Richard of Cornwall, another, under the archbishop of Treves, set up Alfonso “the Wise”, of Castile, a grandson of Philip of Swabia. Richard was crowned at Aix-la-Chapelle, on Ascension-day 1257, and by large gifts to his chief supporters gained a stronger influence than Alfonso, who never showed himself in Germany; but neither of the rivals was able to acquire the reality of power. Pope Alexander and his successors contrived to hold the balance skillfully between the two, acknowledging the title of each, and professing to reserve the decision between them for a further inquiry; and thus, without committing themselves to the cause of either claimant, they were able to impress on the Germans a belief that the decision of such questions belonged to the Roman see.

A.D. 1257-9- ECCELINO DA ROMANO.

In northern Italy there were great commotions. The city of Florence was distracted by the furious enmities of its Guelf and Ghibelline factions; and at one time, when the Ghibellines were triumphant, it would have been destroyed by their allies of Pisa and Siena, but for the patriotic resistance of the Ghibelline chief, Farinata degli Uberti. The proud independence of the republican cities was giving way to the ascendency of lords who succeeded in establishing their domination over them. Among these lords (or tyrants), Eccelino da Romano, of Padua, a zealous partisan of the imperial interest, has earned a remembrance above the rest by a career of unequalled atrocity. After twenty years of triumphant cruelty and oppression, he was overcome and taken prisoner in September 1259 by a crusading force under a papal legate, Philip, archbishop of Ravenna. His behavior in prison was sullenly ferocious; on being asked to confess his sins, he answered that he had nothing to repent of, except that he had not destroyed more of his enemies, and that he had led his troops badly. He refused food and drink, tore the bandages from his wounds, and was found dead on the eleventh day after his capture. Among the chief leaders of the crusade, under archbishop Philip, was John of Vicenza, a Dominican friar, who a quarter of a century earlier had distinguished himself as a preacher of universal peace, and had at one time acquired a sort of despotic power in his native city and at Verona, being supposed, in addition to his power of eloquence, to possess the gift of miracles, so as even to raise the dead.

A.D. 1260. THE FLAGELLANTS.

In 1260—a year which had a peculiar significance according to the systems of abbot Joachim and other apocalyptic teachers—a strange fanaticism burst out at Perugia, and spread both southward to Rome, and in the opposite direction to northern Italy, and even beyond the Alps to France and the Rhine, to Hungary, Silesia and Poland. This movement was said to have been begun in obedience to visions, or to the counsel of a blind and mysterious hermit, and is not apparently traceable to the influence of any preacher. In every city, vast multitudes—men, women, and children down to the age of five—paraded the streets, with their faces covered, but their bodies naked to the waist, gesticulating wildly, and pitilessly scourging themselves with whips, while they shouted the invocation, “Holy lady Mary, receive us sinners, and pray Jesus Christ to spare us!”. Some of them, wrought up to a pitch of frenzy, dashed themselves on the ground, in mud or in snow, and screamed out, “Mercy! Mercy! Peace! Peace!”. At first this spectacle excited ridicule; but gradually the feeling of sin impelled many to join the penitents; and, with clergy or monks at their head, bands of them moved from city to city, everywhere communicating their enthusiasm. Any one who held out against the contagion was noted by his neighbors as a “man of the devil”, and it was believed that the impiety of such persons was punished by judgments of heaven. The chroniclers tell us that the movement produced good effects in the reconciliation of enemies and of political factions; that usurers abandoned their practices, that unjust gains were restored, that prisoners were set free, and that for the time there was a general reformation of morals. But in the progress of the movement, circumstances appeared which suggested doubts as to its religious tendency—such as a contempt of the ordinary means of grace, and a proneness to denounce the clergy. The pope declined to encourage it; Manfred refused to admit the flagellants into his kingdom; some of the authorities of northern Italy erected gibbets on their frontiers, as an indication of the fate which awaited any flagellant who should attempt to enter their territories; and in Germany the duke of Bavaria and the bishops were strong in their opposition. Under these discouragements from both temporal and spiritual authorities, and probably also through the natural decay of such enthusiasm, the flagellant revival (as it would now be styled) in no long time died utterly away.

Alexander had been much disquieted in Rome by the partisans of Manfred, and in 1257 had been driven by Brancaleone, on his escape from his second imprisonment, to take refuge at Viterbo. His hopes of restoration on the death of Brancaleone were disappointed; the parties of Rome continued their discords, and the pope, after having resided for some time at Anagni, returned to Viterbo, where he died on the 25th of May 1261.

About the same time the Latin empire of Constantinople came to an end. Almost from its foundation, this unfortunate power had been continually sinking. Its limits had shrunk until it was confined to the city; the emperor, Baldwin II, was reduced to the most pitiable expedients for the means of maintaining his position—selling the lead from the roofs of churches, and even giving his own son as a pledge to the Venetians for the repayment of a loan; and the Latin patriarch was supported by the alms of the pope. While the Venetians were in league with the Latin emperor, their rivals of Genoa allied themselves with the Greeks, and their force contributed to the victory of Alexius Strategopulus, who in 1261 wrested Constantinople from the Latins for the emperor Michael Palaeologus of Nicaea. The dispossessed Baldwin spent the remainder of his days in vainly soliciting assistance from the sovereigns of the west. But the Greek reconquest, instead of bringing fresh vigor to the empire, did little else than restore it to the same condition of decrepitude which had prepared it to fall a prey to the western crusaders fifty-seven years before.

Alexander had allowed the number of cardinals to dwindle down to eighteen, and these were for three months unable to agree in the choice of a successor, until James Pantaleon, patriarch of Jerusalem, arrived at Viterbo, where they were assembled, and was raised by them to the papacy under the name of Urban IV. The new pope, who was the son of a cobbler at Troyes, had chiefly owed his success in life to his skill as a negotiator, which had been shown in many important missions; and he carried on the traditional policy of the papacy with greater vigor than his predecessor. But as he was prosecuting the contest with Manfred, he had the mortification of finding that he was unable to prevent a marriage between the heir of Aragon and one of Manfred’s daughters; nay, that even the saintly Lewis of France, although restrained for a time by scruples, allowed one of his sons to marry into the family which had been thus contaminated by a connection with one whom the Roman church regarded as a bastard, an usurper, and an excommunicate. The pope cited Manfred to appear before him, personally or by proxy, on Maundy Thursday 1263, and answer for his heavy crimes against God and man—his connections with Saracens, whom he was accused of preferring to Christians, the celebration of Divine offices in interdicted places,, the murder of some of his subjects, and other grievous offences. But a difference arose as to the terms of the safe conduct which Manfred required, and, as he did not obey the summons, the pope, without heeding his excuses, renewed his excommunication.

As no further supplies of money were to be expected from England, Urban resolved to set aside the claim of prince Edmund to the Sicilian crown, which he offered to Lewis of France for one of his sons. But Lewis, on account of the claims of Conradin and of Edmund, felt scruples which were not to be overcome by the pope’s assurance that they were groundless, and the offer was transferred to the king’s brother, Charles of Anjou. Charles, who was then forty-two years of age, was of a character utterly unlike that of Lewis. He was stern, ambitious, rapacious, and unscrupulous. His valor had been shown in the late disastrous crusade, from which he had returned before his brother to take the chief share in the regency of France; he was urged on to accept the offer of Sicily by the pride of his wife, the youngest daughter of Raymond Berenger, who had brought him the county of Provence as her dowry, and was discontented at being inferior in rank to her sisters, the queens of France, England and Germany. As Lewis still hesitated to sanction the acceptance of the Sicilian crown by a prince of his house, the archbishop of Cosenza was sent to negotiate with Henry III for the cession of Edmund’s pretensions. Henry represented the vast amount of treasure which he had spent for the object which he was now desired to forego; but he was in the middle of his great struggle with the barons under Simon de Montfort, and in such circumstances he could not afford to alienate the pope by a refusal. The claim of Edmund to Sicily, therefore, was formally relinquished; and by way of recompense the censures of the Roman church were dealt forth against the earl of Leicester and his partisans. The crusade against Manfred was preached in France under the pope’s authority, and the French clergy were exhorted to aid it with a tenth of their income.

CHARLES OF ANJOU.

At Rome a contest arose in August 1263 as to the election of a senator. The citizens were divided between Charles of Anjou and Manfred; but the partisans of Charles prevailed. The pope, afraid that a secular prince established in Rome might have greater power than himself, required Charles to bind himself by oath to certain conditions—that he would not accept the senatorship for more than five years, and if within that time he should get possession of the Sicilian kingdom, he would, if required by the pope, absolutely resign the senatorship. To these proposals Charles acceded; but he used the opportunity to make better terms than before as to the Sicilian kingdom;—that he was to enjoy those parts of it which the pope had wished to reserve for himself, with the exception of the city of Benevento; that his yearly tribute should be lessened; that the succession should be extended beyond the four heirs to whom it had been limited in the earlier scheme; and that females as well as males should be admitted to inherit.

The pope was the more willing to concede because Manfred still continued to make progress, and gained possession of the greater part of the papal territory. Urban, finding himself threatened in his capital, withdrew to Perugia, and there died on the day after his arrival, the 2nd of October 1264.

CLEMENT IV.

Urban had been careful to recruit the college of cardinals with men favorable to his own policy; and their choice fell on Guy Fulcodi, who took the name of Clement IV. The new pope, who was of a noble family in Languedoc, had in early life borne arms, but afterwards became eminent for his learning both in civil and in canon law, and had assisted Lewis IX in his legislation. He had been married, and had two daughters, but after his wife's death he entered into holy orders, and became successively bishop of Le Puy, archbishop of Narbonne, and cardinal-bishop of Sabina. As pope, he was especially careful to discourage his near relations from conceiving ambitious hopes on account of their connection with him; he refused to let his daughters or his niece marry above his own original rank, and warned his nephews not to come to the papal court, or to expect anything from his favor. At the time of his election, he was engaged in a legation to England; and he was obliged, from fear of the Ghibellines, to make his way to Rome in the disguise of a simple monk.

Clement, as a native of southern France, was naturally disposed to favor the interest of Charles of Provence, who sailed from Marseilles about Easter 1265, and proceeded, chiefly by sea, to Rome, where he was received with great pomp, and was invested in the office of senator. But the pope, who was then at Viterbo, found great cause to be uneasy and displeased. Charles had brought with him but few men and no money; he was distressed even for food and clothing, which the Romans refused to supply without payment; and he wished to borrow on the pope’s security, while Clement had pledged his credit so deeply that he could not raise money for his own necessities, and throughout his whole pontificate was unable to venture to Rome on account of the debts which he owed. The pope declared that he could do nothing for Charles except by a miracle, and that his merits were not sufficient to work a miracle. Charles’s violence, also, in taking possession of the Lateran palace drew forth strong remonstrances from Clement, who told him that he could not give up either of his palaces to him, and that in a city where large houses were so plentiful the senator could not be at a loss for a suitable lodging. As the pope’s support was too valuable to be thrown away for such an object, Charles removed from the Lateran; but Clement was still obliged to complain of the exactions which were made in his name. The pope, however, declared Edmund of England to have forfeited the Sicilian crown by neglecting to perform the conditions annexed to the offer of it; he granted it to Charles, who was formally invested in it; and a new agreement was drawn up as to the terms on which it should be held. In default of lawful issue of Charles or of his successors, the kingdom was to revert to the papacy. It was not to be held with the empire, with Germany, Lombardy, or Tuscany. On getting possession of it, Charles was to pay the pope 50,000 ounces of gold. A tribute of 8000 ounces was to be paid every year, and a white palfrey every third year. And the king bound himself to respect all ecclesiastical and monastic property.

The crusade against Manfred was actively preached, with the offer of indulgence for crimes to all who should join it; and thus a host of ruffians was gathered, in addition to the troops which Charles had enlisted in France, and whose acts of violence, as they proceeded on the way to join him at Rome—extortion, plunder, arson, sacrilege, murder—drew forth fresh complaints and reproofs from Clement. By this increase of strength Charles was enabled to press more effectually than before his suit for the coronation of himself and his wife as king and queen of Sicily; and the ceremony —the first coronation of any one below the imperial dignity that had ever taken place in St. Peter’s—was performed by a commission of cardinals on the festival of the Epiphany 1266.

About the middle of January, as the necessities of his army urged him to proceed without delay, Charles set out from Rome for the south. Manfred had attempted to negotiate with him by means of envoys; but they were repelled with the answer, “Tell the sultan of Nocera, that either I shall send him to hell or he shall send me to heaven.” Yet even at this time it would seem that the pope, in his disgust at the disorders of the French, was inclined to relent towards Manfred. Manfred, reduced to stand on his defense, exerted himself with energy to meet the invaders, whose advance into his territory was favored by a season of unusual mildness; but his counsel and valor were displayed in vain. Surprised and deserted through treachery, he fell in the thickest of the fight at the battle of Benevento, on the 26th of February 1266. His body, which was not recognized until two days later, was excluded from Christian burial, as that of an excommunicate person, and was interred by the victor’s command near the bridge of Benevento, where the French, in a generous feeling of respect for a brave and unfortunate enemy, heaped up a cairn over it, each casting a stone. But the archbishop of Cosenza, by command of the pope, afterwards caused the corpse to be cast out of this resting-place, as being unworthy to find sepulture within the territory of the church, and it was again committed, without any religious rites, to a grave in a remote valley of the Abruzzi. The ruffians whom the pope had invested with the character of crusaders again excited his indignation, by plundering his city of Benevento with circumstances of atrocious outrage and excess.

The whole of the south now submitted to Charles, and throughout Italy the overthrow of Manfred struck terror into the Ghibellines, so that many who had until then held out submitted to the church. The widowed queen, a princess of the Comnenian family, fell into the victor’s hands, with her children, who spent many years—and some of them the whole remainder of their lives—in strict and hopeless captivity. Manfred’s adherents were cruelly punished, and the country was subjected to a grinding taxation and to oppressions of all sorts by the new officials who took the place of those employed under the late reign. The pope remonstrated vehemently, both as to Charles’s treatment of his new subjects, and as to his neglect of the conditions by which he had bound himself to the Roman see. Yet when the king visited Rome in 1267, Clement on Palm Sunday bestowed on him the golden rose, and to this gift he added the titles of Vicar of the Empire and Pacificator of Tuscany.

Even those of Charles’s subjects who had been opposed to Manfred now learnt to regret the change of rulers, and a general feeling arose in favor of Conradin, who was invited to attempt the recovery of the Sicilian throne. The heir of the Hohenstaufen, who had been left fatherless at the age of two, was now fifteen, and had grown up into a handsome, spirited, and accomplished youth. When the Sicilian enterprise was proposed, his mother and the more cautious of his counselors endeavored to dissuade him, but Conradin was filled with the thought of the great things which had been achieved by his grandfather Frederick, to whose earlier history his own seemed thus far to bear a likeness. Despising the threats by which the pope endeavored to deter him, he crossed the Alps in the autumn of 1267, with a force of about 10,000 men, which, notwithstanding some desertions occasioned by his want of money, continually increased as he went on. At Pisa and Siena he was welcomed with much splendor; and, as he passed Viterbo, where the pope was, he displayed his forces before the walls, but disdained to make any attack on him. Clement had from the beginning spoken of the young prince’s expedition with contemptuous denunciations, foretelling that he would pass away like a smoke, and on Maundy Thursday 1268 he anathematized him, with his partisans, and summoned him to submit to penance. But when Conradin entered Rome, having been invited by an embassy of the citizens, the streets were hung with garlands, and the general magnificence of his reception put to shame that which under the papal auspices had greeted Charles of Anjou. Henry, the brother of Alfonso of Castile, after many adventures in Africa and Sicily, had been chosen senator, partly through the influence of Charles, who was his nephew; but the two had now quarrelled, and both at Rome and in Sicily Henry supported the young Hohenstaufen with all his power. He unscrupulously laid the treasures of churches under contribution for his service, and incurred a share of the pope’s denunciation for his sake. Conradin advanced into Apulia; the fleet of Pisa, which was in his interest, had defeated the Provencal fleet; Sicily was won by his partisans, and the Saracens of Nocera rose in his behalf. On the 23rd of August, the young adventurer’s army encountered that of Charles at Scurcola, near Tagliacozzo. Fora time success appeared to be with Conradin; but by too readily believing that his opponent was defeated and slain, he exposed himself to Charles, who surprised him by breaking from an ambush, and inflicted on him a total overthrow. Conradin fled to Rome, but was refused admittance into the Capitol by Guy of Montefeltro, who commanded for the senator Henry. He then attempted to escape by sea to Sicily, but was arrested near Astura by one of the Frangipani—a family which had been loaded with benefits by the Swabian princes, but had lately been won to the papal side by large concessions—and, after having been imprisoned for a time at Palestrina, he was carried by Charles to Naples. Although a promise of safety had been given in the name of Charles—whether without authority or treacherously—Conradin was brought to trial; and, although one only of his judges could be brought to pronounce for death that sentence was approved by Charles, and the last heir of the great Hohenstaufen family, with ten of his chief companions in his enterprise, perished on the scaffold. His fate excited throughout Christendom a general feeling of pity and horror. The pope had exhorted Charles to mercy, but in vain; and Clement himself survived only a month the execution of Conradin—dying at Viterbo on the 29th of November, 1268.

ST. LEWIS.

The reign of Lewis IX of France, after his return from the Holy Land, had been distinguished by the display of high kingly qualities, of personal sanctity, and of that strong sense of the rights of royalty and law, as opposed to the assumptions of Rome, which is the more remarkable on account of the devout and ascetic piety with which it was combined. Warned, perhaps, by the history of Henry II of England, he did not attempt to interfere by his own authority with the immunities to which the clergy pretended; but he gained the substantial acknowledgment of the rights of the state by prevailing on Alexander IV, in 1260, to allow that the king’s officials should not be liable to excommunication for arresting criminal clerks in flagrant delict, provided that they held them at the disposal of the ecclesiastical courts. The national rights were still further asserted in the “Pragmatic Sanction” of the year 1269. The only article, indeed, of this document which is in direct opposition to Rome, is one which forbids the exaction of money by the Roman court except with the sanction of the king and the church of France. But the whole tone of it is anti-papal, and accords with the declaration in the king’s “Establishments” that the king of France “holdeth of no one save God and himself.” In a like spirit was the answer of Lewis, when the bishop of Auxerre, in the name of the clergy, represented to him that excommunication was despised (as was indeed natural, from the frequency with which it was pronounced for all manner of trifling causes), and that many excommunicate persons died without seeking absolution. For these reasons the bishop desired that the spiritual sentence might be enforced by civil penalties. The king replied that he would consent, if it were certain that the excommunicates were in the wrong. The clergy objected that it was not for secular courts to determine such a question; but Lewis adhered to his declaration, and the clergy did not venture to renew their proposal. Thus the saintly reputation of the king enabled him to assert with success, and almost without question, principles which would have drawn on any ordinary sovereign charges of impiety and of hostility to the church; and to him is chiefly due the foundation of those liberties by which the Gallican church was for centuries distinguished.

Amidst the labors of government at home, Lewis had never forgotten his crusading vow. While the popes, although they affected to keep the cause of the holy war before men’s eyes, were bestowing all their energies and all the treasures that they could collect on the destruction of the Hohenstaufen, the disasters which were continually reported from the east filled the pious king with sorrow. In May 1267 he appeared at an assembly of his nobles, holding in his hand the relic which was reverenced as the crown of thorns, and in pathetic terms exhorted them to the holy war. After a cardinal-legate had addressed the assembly, Lewis set the example of taking the cross, and in this he was followed by his three sons, by the king of Navarre, and by many others, whose motive was rather attachment to their sovereign than any religious enthusiasm. Yet many hung back—among them the biographer Joinville, who remembered the oppressions which the officers of the kings of France and Navarre had inflicted on his people during his absence on the former crusade, and reflects severely on those counselors who advised the king to undertake the new expedition, without regard either to the interests of his kingdom or to his own enfeebled health. The pope granted for the enterprise a tenth of the income of the French clergy for three years, and, although they cried out that the impost was sacrilegious, and that they would rather be excommunicated than pay, it was rigidly exacted of them. The crusade was preached in other countries with some success. Edward, the heir of England, pledged Gascony to the French king in order to raise the means of joining it. The king of Aragon also offered to go; but the pope had already reproved him for adultery, had indignantly disallowed the plea that his lawful wife was a leper, and now told him that he must forsake his sinful life before taking part in the holy work. In the meantime tidings reached the west that Antioch had fallen into the hands of the infidels, with a vast loss of Christians slain or taken prisoners.

On the 14th of March 1270, Lewis, although so weak that he could neither bear armor nor endure to sit long on horseback, took the oriflamme from the altar of St. Denys, and set out on his second crusade. He celebrated Easter at Cluny, and thence made his way to Aigues Mortes, where the expedition was to embark. But there the troops were obliged to wait for the arrival of the Genoese vessels which were engaged to transport them; and this delay was unfortunate, both from the effect of the pestilential air, and because it gave time for the old jealousy between the northern and the southern French to break out into bloody quarrels. At length, on the 1st of July, the expedition sailed, and, after some dangers at sea, a meeting took place off the Sardinian coast, where a descent on Tunis was resolved on. It is supposed that this resolution had been suggested by the king’s brother Charles in order to punish the sultan of Tunis for refusing to continue the tribute which he had paid to former kings of Sicily. Lewis had already corresponded on friendly terms with the sultan, Muley Montanza, and had hoped to act as sponsor at his baptism—for the sight of which he declared that he would gladly endure captivity in a Saracen dungeon for the remainder of his days. But on landing in Africa, these sanguine visions were dissipated. The sultan’s troops attacked and harassed the crusaders, and speedily the baleful climate, the want of water and of wholesome food, began to produce their effects. Among those who were early carried off was the pope’s legate. John Tristan, count of Nevers, the son who had been born during the captivity of Lewis on his former crusade, sank, and died on the 3rd of August; and the king himself, from whose already weakened constitution the disease met with no resistance, died on the 25th of the same month, after having signally displayed in his last hours the piety which had throughout marked his life.

The new king, Philip, was himself so ill at the time of his father’s death that he gave up all hope of recovery, and appointed a regency for the expected minority of his son. Charles of Sicily, on whose co-operation the crusaders had relied, arrived too late to find his brother alive, but undertook the military conduct of the expedition; and, after two bloody engagements, forced from the sultan a peace, which included liberty of religion, permission to preach Christianity, compensation for the cost of the war, release of captives, and a yearly tribute to the Sicilian crown. Having secured these advantages, the survivors of the crusade left the African coast, professing that, after having recruited their strength in France, they would resume the expedition to the East; but a storm in which many of them perished was very generally regarded as a judgment on them for having “sold the holy war for money”. King Philip recovered his health; but as he returned through Italy, he had to carry with him the remains of his father, of his brother, of his queen, who died at Cosenza, of one of his own children, and of his brother-in-law, king Theobald of Navarre. At Viterbo he found the cardinals assembled for the election of a pope, and witnessed the murder of Henry, son of Richard of Germany. Henry March 13, had accompanied his cousin prince Edward on the crusade, but had been sent back by him with the intention that he should act as his representative at home; and at Viterbo he unhappily fell in the way of Guy and Simon de Montfort, the sons of the late earl of Leicester, who, to avenge their father’s death on the family by whose partisans he had been slain, stabbed the unsuspecting prince in the cathedral at the moment of the elevation of the Host. Philip, after having made the passage of Mont Cenis with difficulty, celebrated the obsequies of his father at St. Denys, carrying on his own shoulders the coffin which contained the bones of the saintly king.

Edward of England had been delayed so that he was unable to join the crusade at Aigues Mortes, and did not reach Tunis until after the departure of Philip and his companions. On learning the result of the expedition, he made for Sicily, where Charles was unable to persuade him to relinquish his intention of proceeding to the east, or to share in the money which had been got from the Saracens. After spending the winter in Sicily, he sailed for Acre, and displayed his valor in the defense of that city—now the only remaining possession of the Latins in Syria—and in several encounters with the infidels. But the smallness of his force prevented any considerable achievements, and the object of the crusades appeared to be as distant as it had been before St. Lewis took arms in the sacred cause.

CHAPTER IV

FROM THE ELECTION OF POPE GREGORY X TO THE DEATH OF NICOLAS IV.

A.D. 1271-1292

After the death of Clement IV, the papacy was vacant for nearly three years, as the cardinals, eighteen in number, who were assembled at Viterbo, were divided into two parties, and could not be brought to agree in the choice of a successor. At last it was resolved, by the system which was afterwards styled compromise, to delegate the power of election to three members of each party; and these, on the 1st of September 1271, chose Theobald, formerly archdeacon of Liége. Theobald, although a member of the family of Visconti of Piacenza, had been preserved from the spirit of Italian faction by spending the greater part of his life in foreign countries. He had been deprived of his archdeaconry through the envy of the bishop of Liége, and received the news of his election at Acre, where he was engaged in the crusade under Edward of England. The pope took leave of the east with the words of the Psalmist, “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning!” and returned to Europe with the resolution to stir up its warriors once more for the recovery of the Holy Land.  After having been consecrated and crowned at Rome, on the 27th of March 1272, by the name of Gregory X, he followed the example of his predecessor by taking up his residence at Viterbo. Edward, finding his force insufficient for any great undertakings, concluded a truce with the Saracens for ten years, ten months, and ten days, and set sail for Europe. On landing at Trapani, he was informed of his father’s death; and as he proceeded by land to take possession of his kingdom, he was received with great honour by the pope at Orvieto.

While the papacy was vacant, Charles of Sicily, who had used his influence to prolong the interregnum, had so much increased his power as to become the arbiter of Italy. Gregory could not but see that his predecessors had seriously hampered the Roman see by connecting it with such a champion, and that the objects which Charles now aimed at were very different from his own. While Charles was wholly intent on his private interests; while he grounded his hopes of power in Italy and Sicily on the policy of encouraging the native factions to mutual fury; while his ambition suggested schemes for gaining possession of the empire of Constantinople, to which he had acquired for his family a nominal title by marrying one of his sons to the daughter of the dispossessed Baldwin II—Gregory desired to unite all Christendom—the Italian states and their factions, the nations of western Europe, and the Christians of the east—in a grand common effort for the recovery of the Holy Land. As no hope of this could be entertained so long as Europe was unsettled, the pope resolved to provide some counterpoise to the exorbitant influence of Charles, who, through the weakness of his nephew Philip, had come to be regarded as the virtual head of his powerful family; and the time seemed to have arrived for the revival of the imperial dignity from the long abeyance into which it had fallen. The late popes had continued the equivocal policy of Alexander IV as to the claims of Richard and Alfonso; and while the English prince’s influence had been lessened by the exhaustion of his treasures, and by his long absence from Germany in consequence of having been made prisoner at the battle of Lewes (may 14, 1264), Alfonso had never taken any active measures to assert his pretensions to the German crown. On the death of Richard, in 1272, Alfonso applied to the pope, and desired that a time might be appointed for his coronation as emperor; but Gregory told him in reply that he had not acquired any fresh rights by his rival’s death. A new king of Germany was to be elected, and the part which Gregory took in the affair significantly shows the extent to which the papal power had grown. He urged the Germans to choose a king from among themselves; he discouraged the pretensions of Ottocar of Bohemia, who, although the most powerful prince in Germany, was liable to the objection that he belonged to the Slavonic race; he even threatened that, if the Germans should neglect to do their duty, he would, with the consent of his cardinals, take order for the filling of the vacant throne. The cities of Germany resolved that, if the princes should agree in the choice of a king, they would obey him, but that, in case of a double election, they would not acknowledge either claimant. On the 29th of September 1273, Rudolf, count of Hapsburg, was chosen at Frankfort, not only by the seven electors, but by an assembly of all the princes; and it was in vain that the king of Bohemia, whose representatives had been shut out from the election, attempted to question the result of it. Rudolf was a petty independent prince, fifty-five years of age, who had been recommended by his valour, his frankness, affability, honesty, and other popular qualities, while he was not so powerful as to give cause for apprehension that he might revive the authority which emperors in former days had exercised. Attempts were afterwards made to trace his pedigree to Charlemagne, to the Merovingians, and even to connect him with the Anicii of ancient Rome through the strange channel of the Jewish Pierleoni; but to these genealogies no credit is to be given. The new king was crowned at Aix-la-Chapelle on the 24th of October, by Engelbert, archbishop of Cologne; and, when a sceptre could not be found for the investiture of the feudatories, and some of them were on this account inclined to refuse the oath of fealty, Rudolf produced a strong and general impression by using the crucifix as a substitute.

With a view to the enterprise which he had so much at heart, Gregory, on the 1st of April in his first year, issued a summons to a general council, which was to meet in the next year but one; and, as there could be little hope of raising the nations beyond the Alps except by holding it on their side of the great mountain barrier, a later citation fixed on Lyons as the place of assembly.

In order to forward his designs as to the east, Gregory attempted to effect a reconciliation between the Greek church and his own. The old religious enmity between the Greeks and the Latins had naturally been embittered by the Latin conquest of Constantinople. Reproaches of heresy had been bandied on both sides, and, although political interest had often tended to draw the Greeks and the papacy together, the questions of doctrine had continued to prevent a reconciliation. Missions had been sent to mediate between the two communions; but their labours had always been abortive. Each party threw the blame of the schism on the other, and the Latins insisted that all concessions should come from the opposite side, or at the utmost would only allow some nugatory indulgences, such as that the Greeks should not be compelled to pronounce the article of the double procession in their public service, provided that they all believed it, and that all books which maintained the opposite opinion were burnt. But for these difficulties, Vatatzes—who in a reign of thirty-three years gradually extended his sway from the Turkish frontier on the east to the Adriatic on the west, while Constantinople alone remained isolated in the hands of the Latins—would probably have been able to get himself acknowledged by Rome; and he was the more inclined to seek reconciliation with the western church, because he had incurred the censure of the Greek clergy by his infidelity to a contract of marriage with a natural daughter of the emperor Fredericks But it was in vain that Vatatzes proposed a compromise founded on the analogy of secular negotiations—that the Latins should give up their creed if the Greeks would consent to respect their sacrament.

A.D. 1258-66. ARSENIUS OF CONSTANTINOPLE.

Theodore Lascaris II, the son and successor of Vatatzes, died in 1258, leaving the empire to a boy eight years of age, named John, whom he placed under the guardianship of the patriarch Arsenius and of the protovestiary George Muzalon. On the death of Muzalon, who was slain in a tumult, three days after the late emperor’s funeral, his place was filled by Michael Palaeologus, the most eminent of the Greek nobles as to birth and reputation; but Palaeologus, not content with the position of a guardian, a regent, or even of a colleague in the empire, procured himself to be crowned without admitting John to a share of the honour, and, after having achieved the reconquest of Constantinople, received the crown afresh in St. Sophia’s, (Dec. 25,1261) while John was blinded and imprisoned. For this Michael was excommunicated by Arsenius, although his name was still retained in the public prayers; and his entreaties for absolution, although supported by ecclesiastics of high authority whom he had drawn into his interest, were sternly declared by the patriarch to be unavailing unless he would make a satisfaction equal to the greatness of the offence. “Do you require that I should abdicate the throne?” asked the emperor, kneeling in penitential form at the feet of Arsenius; and, as he spoke, he began to unbuckle his sword, the ensign of secular power. But the eagerness with which the patriarch caught at it alarmed him; he declared that he had only intended to try the spirit of Arsenius, who, instead of aiding a sinner in his repentance, as the canons prescribed, had wished to dethrone him; and charges of irregularity were brought against the patriarch—among other things, that he had allowed the sultan of Iconium and some companions to bathe in the laver of the church. Arsenius—whose character may be inferred from his boast that he possessed nothing but a cloak, a pyx, and three pieces of gold, which he had earned by transcribing the Psalms—refused to appear before the tribunal which was appointed to try him; he was deposed by a synod, and banished to the island of Proconnesus, where he died without having relented towards Palaeologus. For forty-six years the deprived patriarch’s followers—a party which, unlike such parties in general, increased in numbers—held aloof from the communion of the emperors, defying both threats and attempts at conciliation.

The pope was very desirous to gain the cooperation of Michael for the crusade, while the eastern emperor was equally desirous to protect himself by an alliance with the pope against the disaffected clergy of his own church, against his Bulgarian neighbours, and most especially against the designs of Charles of Sicily, which he had already tried to avert by an embassy to St. Lewis. Letters were therefore interchanged in a friendly tone, and a mission of Franciscans, headed by Jerome of Ascoli, who were sent by Gregory to Constantinople, found the task of negotiation easy. The venerated names of the confessor Maximus, of Cyril of Alexandria, and even of Athanasius, were alleged to prove that the differences were merely verbal. The Greek clergy, although for the most part strongly averse from union with the Latins, were coerced by the imperial power, which regarded all opposition as treason; one of the most eminent among them, John Veccus, after having declared that there were heretics who were not so styled, and that among these were the Italians, was converted by imprisonment and study to admit their soundness in the faith. The patriarch Joseph (whose intrigues had persuaded Germanus, the successor of Arsenius, to resign), was opposed to union; but, by an understanding with the emperor, he withdrew into a monastery, to await the event of the negotiations, and a Greek embassy, headed by the ex-patriarch Germanus, was sent to the council of Lyons, with splendid gifts for St. Peter. They carried also a letter from the emperor, in which he owned the primacy of Rome, and professed the Latin creed, but requested that the Greeks might be allowed to use their creed as before the separation of the churches, and to retain such usages as were not contrary to the authority of Scripture, councils, and fathers, or to the Roman faith.

A.D. 1274. SECOND COUNCIL OF LYONS.

The second council of Lyons—the fourteenth general council, according to the Roman account—met in the cathedral church of St. John on the 7th of May 1274. In respect of numbers, no such imposing assembly had yet been seen; the Latin patriarchs of Constantinople and Antioch were present, with upwards of five hundred bishops, and more than a thousand inferior dignitaries; while the laity were represented by King James of Aragon, and by ambassadors from all the principal states of the west. But, if these numbers greatly exceeded those of the former council which had been held at the same place, the contrast in the purpose and spirit of the two assemblies was yet more remarkable. Under Innocent IV, the great object of the council was to excommunicate the foremost sovereign of Christendom; under Gregory X it was to establish between all Christians a general reconciliation and peace.

In order to avoid any recurrence of the quarrels as to precedence which had disturbed the former council, the pope ordered that the members should take their seats promiscuously; and at the first session, in a sermon from the same text which Innocent III had chosen at the Lateran council of 1215, he proposed as the three great subjects of deliberation, a subsidy for the Holy Land, the union of the Greeks, and the reformation of morals. The subsidy was carried, although the pope found but little response to his own enthusiasm, and was obliged to have recourse to private conferences with archbishops and other prelates in order to secure this object. Edward of England had resisted his urgent entreaties that he would attend the council before returning to his own dominions, and throughout his whole reign was too much engrossed by his interests at home to renew the attempt for the recovery of the Holy Land. But, although the dean of Lincoln brought forward at the council a representation of the exhausted state of the kingdom, he did not venture on any decided opposition to the proposed measure; and the clergy of England joined with those of other countries in promising a tithe of their revenues for six years towards the holy war.

The Greek ambassadors appeared, and were received with great marks of honour. The controversial skill of the two great theologians Bonaventura and Thomas of Aquino, who had been invited to appear at the council as champions of the western faith, was found needless; for the Greeks admitted everything—the Latin doctrines and usages, and the primacy of the Roman see. Five days after their arrival, the pope celebrated mass on the feast of St. Peter and St. Paul, in the presence of all the prelates; and, after the Nicene creed had been chanted in Latin, it was repeated in Greek by the Greek and Calabrian bishops, who, when they came to the article of the double procession, sang it thrice “with solemnity and devotion.” The reconciliation of the two churches was formally ratified at the fourth session of the council, when the long-disputed article was again chanted twice, and the great logothete, George Acropolita, professed, in the name of the emperor and of the empire, a firm and unalterable adherence to the faith of the Roman church. At the same session, the survivor of two ambassadors who had been sent by a khan of the Mongols appeared, and at the next session, ten days later, he and his companions were baptized. There were, however, some who regarded the professed mission of these Tartars with suspicion, and their baptism led to no such results as the more sanguine of the Latins had expected.

Envoys from Rudolf of Hapsburg appeared at the council, and requested the pope to confirm his election. They bound their master by solemn engagements to all that had been promised by Frederick II or by any other emperor—that he renounced the jus exuviarum, that he allowed freedom of elections and appeals to Rome, that he would not attack the property of the church, or take any office or dignity in the Roman state—more especially in the city of Rome—without the pope’s permissions In reply to this application, Gregory in the following September confirmed the election of Rudolf, in words which by their ambiguity were intended to insinuate a claim to the right of nominating the king of the Romans.

At the sixth and last session of the council, on the 17th of July, the pope inveighed strongly against the vices of prelates, and earnestly exhorted them to reform themselves.

Among thirty-one canons which this assembly produced, was one as to the election of popes—intended to prevent a recurrence of any such delay as that which had taken place on the last vacancy. This canon, after professing to follow the rules of earlier date, and especially the decree of Alexander III, in the third Lateran council, orders that the cardinals, without waiting more than ten days for the absent members of their body, shall meet for the choice of a successor, each of them attended by one clerk or lay domestic only, and shall be shut up in one “conclave,” which shall not be divided by any walls or curtains; that they shall hold no communication with the world outside, and that anyone who shall withdraw shall not be readmitted, unless his withdrawal were caused by manifest sickness; that their food shall be supplied through a window; that, if the election be not made within three days, their provisions shall be limited to one dish at dinner and one at supper for the next five days; and after that time, to bread, wine, and water. This canon, not unnaturally, was very unacceptable to the cardinals, who endeavoured to draw the bishops into opposition to it; but the pope succeeded in gaining the bishops, and by their votes the new regulation was carried.

Rudolf wrote to thank the pope for the favour which had been shown to him, and expressed his intention of going on a crusade, more especially because his father had died in the Holy Land. Gregory, by a threat of excommunication, and by the offer of a tenth of ecclesiastical income for the war against the Moors, prevailed on Alfonso to give up his pretensions to the German crown; and on his return to Italy, the pope had an interview with Rudolf at Lausanne. The king confirmed all that had been done by his representatives at Lyons; he took the cross, with his wife and children, and made arrangements for receiving the imperial crown in St. Peter’s at Whitsuntide following. He engaged to help the pope towards the recovery of all his territory, including Corsica and Sardinia; to respect the privileges which Lewis the Pious and Otho I were supposed to have granted to the Roman church; to aid in retaining the kingdom of Sicily for the Roman see, and to give up all claim to the exarchate of Ravenna, the Pentapolis, the territories of Ancona and Spoleto, and the inheritance of the countess Matilda. Thus Gregory had gained from the empire more than any of his predecessors. By his forcing one claimant to withdraw his pretensions, and by the part which he took in the election and confirmation of the other, it seemed as if the choice of an emperor were virtually in the hands of the pope. All the forged or doubtful privileges in favour of the papal see, from the time of Lewis the Pious downwards, were acknowledged as valid and binding; and the pope was owned as temporal lord of all the territories which had formerly been subjects of contention.

In addition to these important gains, Gregory had accomplished, as it seemed, the pacification of the west, the reconciliation of the Greek church and empire to Rome, and the combination of all Christian nations for a new crusade. But in the midst of his triumphs, he was arrested by sudden death at Arezzo, on the 10th of January 1276, and the effect of his labours was in great measure lost. The crusading spirit had long been declining, and the loss and suffering which had attended the late attempts of the saintly Lewis had tended yet further to damp the ardour for the holy war. The author of a treatise drawn up with a view to the council of Lyons, mentions seven causes why Christians were lukewarm as to the crusade, and finds it necessary to combat seven classes of persons who spoke against such enterprises. And a troubadour of the time, after lamenting the death of king Lewis, curses the crusades, and the clergy for promoting them; he even reproaches the Almighty for their ill success, and, after much invective against the pope and the priests, he expresses a wish that the emperor and the French would lead a crusade against the clergy, to whom he ascribes the destruction of the Christian chivalry.

Nor was the agreement with the Greeks more successful than the project of a crusade. Michael Palaeologus, indeed, endeavoured to enforce it: the patriarch Joseph was superseded by the Latinizing John Veccus; the Gospels were read in Latin as well as in Greek at the religious services of the court; the western patriarch was prayed for as “supreme high-priest of the apostolical church, and ecumenical pope”; and the emperor, although he secretly complained of the pride of the Latins, employed the most violent and cruel measures for enforcing conformity—violence and cruelty the less excusable because his motives for the course which he took were merely political. Ambassadors were sent to assure the pope that all was well, and, on being admitted to his presence, they found Charles of Sicily on his knees before him, entreating his permission to attack the Greeks, and gnawing his ivory-headed staff in rage at Gregory’s refusal. But Michael found that the truce with Sicily, which he had procured through the pope’s mediation, was dearly bought at the price of the disaffection of his own subjects, who execrated him as a heretic and an apostate, and threatened the stability of his throne.

INNOCENT V.—ADRIAN V.—JOHN XXI

Within a year after the death of Gregory, three popes in succession were raised to the chair. The first of these, Peter of Tarentaise, bishop of Ostia, and a Dominican, had distinguished himself by writing a commentary on Peter Lombard’s Sentences, although not without incurring suspicions of heterodoxy. After a pontificate of five months, under the name of Innocent V, he was succeeded by a nephew of Innocent IV, Ottobuoni Fiesco, cardinal-deacon of St. Adrian, who had been engaged as legate in England during the war of the barons, and had rendered his legation memorable by a set of canons passed at a council held under him in 1168. From the name of his titular church, Ottobuoni styled himself Adrian V; but he did not live to be consecrated, or even to be ordained to the priesthood, and it is said that, when congratulated on his election, he answered, “Would that you came to a cardinal in health, rather than to a dying pope!”. The - chief act of his pontificate, which lasted only five weeks, was to release his countrymen the Genoese from an excommunication which had been inflicted on them at his own desire by Gregory.

Adrian was succeeded by a Portuguese named Peter, who had formerly been archbishop of Braga, but having been deprived of the revenues of his see by king Sancho II, had been preferred to the bishopric of Frascati by Gregory X. John XXI (for this was the name which he assumed) was eminent for his scientific knowledge, which procured him the reputation of an astrologer. A writer of the time tells us that he was hasty in speech and careless of appearances, and that his affability served to render his indiscretions the more notorious. His dislike of monks was undisguised; and the monastic writers regard the manner of his death as a judgment on him for this offence. He had, it is said, persuaded himself by astrological calculations that he was to live long; but within little more than eight months after his election, as he was surveying with pride and joy a lofty building which he had raised at Viterbo—according to some, an observatory for the cultivation of his favourite science—it suddenly fell and crushed him, so that, although he was extricated from the ruins, and was able to receive the last sacraments, he died on the sixth day.

In all the late elections, the cardinals had found the severe regulation of the council of Lyons an inconvenience. Adrian had intended to modify it, and on his death the cardinals announced that it was suspended by his authority. John XXI had revoked the decree, or suspended it afresh; but the people of Viterbo—who regarded it as a wholesome safeguard against intrigues and long delays—after six months had passed from the death of John, shut the cardinals up in the town-hall of their city until they should agree on the election of a successor.

NICOLAS III.

The choice of the cardinals, who were only seven in number, fell at length on John Gaetano, cardinal of S. Nicolas, a member of the great Roman family of Orsini, who took the name of Nicolas III. The new pope was the son of a tertiary of the Franciscan order, to which he had been devoted from infancy, and as a member of the order he had been employed as an inquisitor into heresy. From his union of personal graces with great abilities and various acquirements, he had got the title of Il Composto—the accomplished; but he cared more for the interests of the papacy than for those of the church; his patronage was distributed among his own family, with an utter disregard of public spirit; and the corruption which he encouraged in his court has drawn on him the reprobation of Dante. From Viterbo, where the late popes had lived, Nicolas transferred the papal residence back to Rome, where, besides executing important works at the Lateran and St. Peter’s, he began the vast structure of the Vatican palace.

Nicolas was resolved to check the power of Charles of Anjou, who is said to have provoked him by refusing the proposal of a family connection, with the insulting remark—“Does he think that, because he has red stockings, his blood is fit to mix with ours?”, and for the means of humbling the dangerous neighbour whom the papacy had raised up for itself, he looked to the new king of the Romans, Rudolf of Hapsburg. Rudolf since his election had greatly increased in strength. The activity of his movements had made his power felt in every quarter of Germany; he had recovered fiefs which had been alienated from the crown, had destroyed many of the castles which bristled throughout the land, and had done away with the terror of the predatory little tyrants who occupied them. His most formidable opponent, Ottocar of Bohemia, had gradually sunk before him, and at last had been killed in battle in August 1278. It was well for Rudolf that the successors of Gregory X did not inherit that pope’s interest in the crusade, and that he was consequently at liberty to employ himself in the works which were necessary for the consolidation of his power and the suppression of anarchy at home. He had put off from time to time the expedition to Rome for the purpose of receiving the imperial crown, and he had required that Charles should resign the vicariate of Tuscany, with which he had been invested during the abeyance of the empire. Charles, however, declared that he would not resign either this dignity or the senatorship of Rome except to the pope; and Nicolas requested that Rudolf would not come into Italy until the difficulty should have been settled. Nicolas skillfully took advantage of his position to play Rudolf and Charles against each other. From Rudolf he obtained an acknowledgment of his sovereignty over the territories mentioned in the compact with Gregory X, with some which were not included in that document. The old spurious privileges were all admitted by the emperor-elect as binding; and when one of his officials had exacted an act of homage to him from the inhabitants of some Italian towns—including the great city of Bologna—Rudolf, on receiving a complaint from Nicolas, withdrew his claim and allowed a new oath to be taken to the pope. The condition of these cities, indeed, was substantially one of republican independence, while in some cases the emperor still retained power over them; but Rudolf's cession fell in with the papal policy, which aimed at gaining a nominal sovereignty in the hope that this might at some future time become real.

Having gained so much from Rudolf, and procured through him a confirmation of the act by the princes of Germany, the pope required Charles to resign the vicariate of Tuscany, and also the senatorship of Rome, as the ten years for which they had been granted were at an end. It was evident that by compliance Charles would be reduced from the position which he had occupied as great arbiter of Italy; yet, with a readiness which surprised Nicolas himself, he acquiesced, partly (as it would seem) out of fear lest he should throw the pope into Rudolf’s interest, and partly in order that, by ceding something in Italy, he might forward his designs on the eastern empire. Nicolas on this got himself chosen senator for life, and decreed that no one should be appointed to that office for more than a year, except with the pope’s sanction. With a like view to curbing the power of Charles, Nicolas laboured to reconcile the factions of the Italian cities. He established the sovereignty of the papal power over Rome, and succeeded in acquiring a greater amount of political influence than any of his predecessors had for many years enjoyed. But in the midst of his prosperity, his career was cut short by a stroke of palsy at Soriano, in the diocese of Viterbo, on the 22nd of August 1280.

MARTIN IV.

His death was the signal for violent tumults in Rome, which ended in the appointment of two senators, chosen from the rival houses of Orsini and Anibaldi. Charles of Sicily was bent on procuring the election of a pope who would reverse the policy of the last. There were long and fierce debates among the cardinals; and, as the Lyons decree was not put in force (although it had been re-enacted by Nicolas), it became known how the individual members of the college were affected. The people of Viterbo, gained by Charles, imprisoned the chiefs of the Orsini party; and, after a vacancy of six months, Feb. 22, the election was declared in favour of Simon of Brie, a Frenchman of humble origin, who from a canonry of Tours had been promoted to the cardinalate of St. Cecilia. In honour of the great saint of Tours, the new pope took the name of Martin IV. Martin showed himself an undisguised and unqualified partisan.

His hatred of the Germans was expressed in a wish that they might be frogs in a marsh, and that he himself might be a stork, or that they might be fish in a pond, and that he might be a pike; and, on the other hand, he was an abject tool of Charles of Sicily. When, after having excommunicated the people of Viterbo for their late disobedience, he removed to Orvieto, the king also took up his abode there, that he might have the pope under his eye and at his command. The college of cardinals was increased by six nominees of Charles, and when Martin had procured himself to be chosen senator of Rome, although with an express declaration that the dignity was bestowed on him for his personal merits, and although Nicolas III had expressly decreed that it should not be held by any sovereign prince, or other person of considerable independent power, he transferred it to the king of Sicily as his deputy.

Charles’ designs on the East were now far advanced, and were favoured by the circumstances of the Byzantine empire. While Michael Palaeologus made himself hateful to his own subjects and drove them into schism by the violent means which he employed to enforce the union with the Latin church, the popes complained that he was too slow in performing his engagements. John XXI, in 1277, sent ambassadors to urge that the Greeks should give a substantial proof of their agreement by reciting the creed like the Latins. Michael showed them two of his own near relations who were in prison for opposing the agreement; he gave up to them two other men of high rank, whom he had imprisoned for the same offence; and he returned a letter agreeable to the pope’s wishes, which was rendered more imposing in appearance by a number of fictitious signatures. But the pope restored the two prisoners, saying that they had been wrongfully accused; and the relations of the churches were not improved by the result of the mission. The Latinizing patriarch Veccus was able to effect but little in the work of reconciliation, and after a time was compelled to withdraw into a. cloister in consequence of having incurred the emperor’s displeasure. Under Nicolas, Michael had been in favour at Rome, on account of the common enmity to Charles; but Martin, the devoted slave of Charles, excommunicated and anathematized the eastern emperor, under the pretext that he had failed to fulfill his promises to the church, although the sentence was really dictated by the political interest of the king of Sicily. To this the emperor replied by excluding the pope’s name from the offices of the Greek church; and on his death, which took place in the same year, the disagreement between the east and the west became more flagrant than before. The new emperor, Andronicus, declared that in consenting to his father’s measures he had acted under constraints He bestowed on Michael a funeral of the humblest kind, unaccompanied by any religious rites, and the widowed empress, Theodora, was required to subscribe a promise that she would never ask for such rites in behalf of her husband. Churches which had been infected by the Latinizing worship were subjected to a solemn purification; councils were held, which deposed and banished the patriarch Veccus, chiefly on the ground of his opinion as to the procession of the Holy Spirit, restored his predecessor Joseph, and condemned to the flames all books which favoured the union of the churches. In these circumstances, it became important to conciliate the party of the Arsenites, which still kept up its separation; and, after much negotiation, they proposed that the question between them and the church should be decided by an ordeal. After an attempt to obtain a judgment by enclosing the books of the Arsenites with the body of St. John Damascene had been frustrated by the emperor’s precautions against fraud, it was agreed that the books which contained the arguments in favour of each party were to be cast into a fire; if one book escaped, its partisans were to be acknowledged as in the right; if both should be burnt, the parties were to be reconciled on equal terms. Contrary to the expectation of the Arsenites, the fire impartially consumed their book as well as the other; and thereupon the emperor, accompanied by the chief members of the schism, hastened on foot, through stormy weather, to the residence of the patriarch Gregory, at whose hands they all received the holy eucharist. But next day the Arsenites regretted that they had allowed themselves to be hurried into this reconciliation; and the schism was not healed until, in the year 1312, the body of the inflexible patriarch was translated with honour to Constantinople, and the people after having submitted to penance, were absolved from the sins of their forefathers.

While Michael was yet alive, Charles employed himself in active preparations for a new conquest of Constantinople. He had engaged the pope in his interest, had formed alliances with the Venetians and with his nephew Philip of France, and was collecting ships and soldiers, when an unexpected event compelled him to direct all his energies to objects nearer home.

From the time of the French conquest, the Sicilians had suffered oppressions of the most grievous kind. They were ground down by exorbitant taxes, their lands and property were confiscated without a pretence of justice, they were compelled to accept a debased coinage instead of their genuine money, they were subjected to the arts of corrupt officials, they were plundered and insulted by the dominant race, and their wives and daughters were dishonoured. So crying were the evils of Charles’ government that they had drawn on him earnest remonstrances, and even threats of ecclesiastical censure, from Clement IV and Gregory X; and the sufferings of his subjects had lately been aggravated by his preparations for war with the Byzantine empire—a war, moreover, for which the Sicilians had no inclination, as their relations with the Greeks were of a friendly character.

JOHN OF PROCIDA.

It is said that Conradin on the scaffold, in the marketplace of Naples, threw down his glove among the crowd, and requested that it might be carried to Peter, king or Aragon, whose wife Constance, the daughter of Manfred, was regarded as the last representative of the Hohenstaufen line. To Peter and his queen the oppressed Sicilians looked with hope, while Constance was unremitting in her endeavours to stir her husband to some enterprise for the recovery of the inheritance of her family, and many of those who had been dispossessed by the French conquest found a welcome at the court of Aragon. Among these was John, a nobleman of Salerno and lord of the island of Procida, who by his skill in medicine (of which Salerno was the chief school), and by his other gifts, had acquired the confidence of Frederick II and of Manfred. By taking arms for Conradin he had incurred the forfeiture of all his property, and it is said (although this appears very doubtful), that his wife and daughter had been outraged by the conquerors. Burning with the desire of revenge for these wrongs, John of Procida devoted himself for years to the work of secret agitation. He sold all that he had received from the bounty of the king of Aragon, and, sometimes in the habit of a monk or friar, sometimes in a secular disguise, he repeatedly passed through Sicily, whispering to eager ears the hope of vengeance and of liberty. He made his way to Constantinople, where he engaged the emperor Michael in his projects, and obtained from him a supply of money, with which he assured the doubtful resolution of Nicolas III. In Spain, he found Alfonso of Castile disposed to take part against Charles for refusing to release his brother Henry, formerly the senator of Rome, who had been taken prisoner for his connection with Conradin. Peter of Aragon readily entered into his plans, but took alarm in consequence of the sudden death of Nicolas, so that John had again to visit Constantinople, from which he returned with a large subsidy for the king. Peter then began to make preparations, but when questioned as to them, at the instance of Charles, by an emissary of the pope, he replied that if he thought that one of his hands could tell the other his design, he would cut it off. The ostensible destination of the armament was against the infidels of Africa, and in the beginning of June 1282 Peter sailed for the African coast.

1268-82. THE SICILIAN VESPERS.

In the meantime, the revolution for which preparation had so industriously been made, took place suddenly and as if by accident. On Easter Tuesday 1282, as the inhabitants of Palermo were sauntering in great numbers to celebrate vespers at a Cistercian church, a short distance from the city, while others were dancing under the shade of trees near the road, an insult offered by a French soldier to a high-born and beautiful maiden provoked her betrothed, who accompanied her, to seize the assailant’s sword and kill him on the spot. A cry of “Death to the French!” arose on every side. The fury which had long been gathering intensity from suppression burst forth without restraint. All the Frenchmen who were near the spot were massacred, and the Sicilians, rushing into the city, slaughtered without remorse all who belonged to the detested race—men, women, and children. Churches and monasteries were invaded; monks and friars, as being the allies of the French, were especially chosen for slaughter. Even Sicilian women who were pregnant by French husbands were ripped up, in order to exterminate the race of tyrants; and it is said that some Sicilians drank the blood of their enemies. The movement spread to Messina and throughout the island; everywhere the natives rose in fury against their oppressors, and in a short time no Frenchman remained alive in Sicily.

Having established a provisional government, the citizens of Palermo sent a mission to the pope, entreating him in the humblest manner to mediate with Charles. But Martin, enraged at the slaughter of his countrymen, repulsed the envoys with scorn and with words of violent reproach. Charles, on receiving the tidings of the “Sicilian Vespers”, is said to have uttered aloud a prayer that, if it were God’s pleasure that fortune should turn against him, his decline might be gradual and gentle. But after this expression of pious resignation, he resumed his usual severity. The fleet which he had prepared for the expedition against Constantinople was recalled for the chastisement of Sicily; and the people of Messina, on entreating him to make terms, were told that they must submit their lives and persons to his will. On receiving this answer, the Messinese resolved to stand on their defence, protesting that they would rather die with their families in their home than languish in foreign prisons; even the women, in the general enthusiasm, carried stones, wood, and other materials to help in the fortification of the city. The people of Palermo, on the return of their envoys from the papal court, declared that, since St. Peter refused to protect them, they would seek the aid of another Peter; and an embassy was despatched to the king of Aragon, with the offer of the Sicilian crown. Peter, whose arms had not achieved any great successes in Africa, was delighted to find himself thus summoned to the island on which his eyes had long been fixed, and, in disregard of all the monitions which the pope interposed by letters or by the mouth of a legate, he was crowned at Monreale by the bishop of Cefalu.

Peter formally announced his arrival to Charles, and desired him to withdraw from Sicily; to which Charles replied by defying him as a traitor. But the approach of the Aragonese force compelled Charles to raise the siege of Messina, after he had carried it on for two months, and had almost reduced the inhabitants to despair; and Roger de Loria, a Calabrian who had entered into the service of Aragon, and was regarded as the greatest naval commander of the age, soon after inflicted a total defeat on the Provençal fleet. The firmness of Charles’ mind appeared to be unnerved by his late calamities; he gnawed his ivory headed staff in impotent rage, and his ancient prudence gave way to wildness and extravagance in forming schemes for the recovery of his power. The pope had anathematized the people of Palermo on Ascension-day 1282; and by later documents he included Peter in the sentence, declared him to be deprived of his hereditary dominions, which he affected to bestow on Charles of Valois, a son of the king of France, and proclaimed a crusade for the recovery of Sicily. The tenths which had been collected from several kingdoms for the holy war of the East were to be made over to Charles as a loan; and many French knights, animated by a desire to avenge the blood of their countrymen, took arms and crossed the Alps. But a more summary method of deciding the quarrel was proposed—that it should be referred to the judgment of God by a combat to be fought between the rival kings, each with a hundred companions. The place named for this combat was Bordeaux, in the territory of the king of England, who was to be invited to preside, either in person or by proxy. The challenge was accepted, and although Edward declined to take any part in the affair, while the pope strongly denounced and forbade it, the chiefs on either side enlisted knights of renown to share with them in the intended fight. But the expectations which had been raised were disappointed by the result. Peter, who is said to have made his way to Bordeaux in disguise, as his rival had treacherous designs against him, appeared in the lists, and, after having ridden up and down, obtained from the English king's seneschal a certificate of his appearance, and that Charles had failed to meet him. Charles on another day went through a somewhat similar farce, and each declared the other a dastard and dishonoured.

Charles on his return to Italy had the mortification of hearing that his son Charles the Lame, prince of Salerno, having allowed himself to be enticed into a sea-fight by Roger de Loria, in neglect of his father’s injunction, and in defiance of the papal legate’s warnings, had been defeated and taken; that two hundred of his companions had been put to death, and that there were cries for the blood of the prince himself, in revenge for the death of Conradin. The king in his anger affected to make light of the loss, and, leaving his son a prisoner, to make over the succession to his grandson, in whose honour he celebrated a tournament. At Naples, where he had reason to suspect that many were disaffected to his government, he allowed his soldiers to commit much slaughter, and hanged upwards of a hundred and fifty of the principal citizens, as partisans of the king of Aragon. The agitations which he had lately undergone produced a serious illness; and on the 7th of January 1285 he died at the age of sixty-seven, having seen the successes of many prosperous years almost cancelled by a just retribution for his grievous offences against humanity. On the 29th of March in the same year, pope Martin died at Perugia, to which he had been driven from Orvieto, and the Sicilian crusade which he had organized with the king came to nothing.

HONORIUS IV.

After a vacancy of only four days, the papal chair was filled by Honorius IV, of the family of Savelli, an old man, who, although he retained the full possession of his mental faculties, and is described as very eloquent and persuasive in speech, was crippled by gout to such a degree that in his great public functions he was obliged to make use of a machine which raised and turned him as was required. Between the Guelf and Ghibelline factions of Italy Honorius endeavoured to hold the balance evenly; in other respects his policy was the same as that of his predecessors.

Philip of France carried the holy war which had been proclaimed by pope Martin into the territories of Aragon. A legate had preached the sacred cause in France with offers of indulgences even more ample than usual; and the crusaders exhibited their confidence in their privileges by excesses of cruelty, profanity, and lust. At Elne they slew all who had taken refuge in the cathedral, without regard to age or sex or to the holiness of the place. Girona was besieged until the defenders were compelled by hunger to surrender; but within a week it was recovered by Peter, and the French had suffered so severely from scarcity of provisions and from excessive heat that Philip felt it necessary to begin his retreat. The French king died at Perpignan on the 3rd of October; and on the 11th of November the king of Aragon also died—whether from a wound or in consequence of a chill is uncertain.

Philip the Bold—an epithet for which historians have in vain endeavoured to find a reason—was succeeded by his son Philip the Fair, a youth of seventeen. Aragon fell to Alfonso, the eldest son of the late king, and Sicily to his second son, James, against whom and his mother Constance Honorius denounced his excommunication, while Alfonso was only able to escape a like sentence by frequent missions to deprecate the papal displeasure.

On the death of Honorius, which took place on the 3rd of April 1287, there was great difficulty as to the choice of a successors Sixteen of the nineteen cardinals were shut up in St. Sabina’s on the Aventine, which had been the late pope’s usual residence, and there six of them died, while Jerome of Ascoli, general of the Franciscans and cardinal of Palestrina, warded off the malaria which was fatal to his brethren by keeping up fires through the hottest weather in all the rooms which he used. The vacancy was ended by the election of Jerome as pope on the 22nd of February 1288, and in remembrance of the pope to whom he owed his cardinalate he took the name of Nicolas IV.

Edward of England, who was connected with the royal families both of France and of Aragon, had attempted to mediate between them, and to procure the liberation of Charles the Lame, by proposing that the Spaniards should renounce their pretensions to Sicily on condition of being left in unmolested possession of Aragon; and, although Honorius had objected to this compromise, as derogatory to the church, which had unreservedly espoused the French interest, the English king had renewed his mediation during the vacancy of the papal chair. In consequence of his intervention, Charles was at length set free on condition that he should return to captivity unless he fulfilled certain stipulations, and his three sons were given up as hostages for the performance of this engagement. Nicolas declared his oath to be null, on the ground that his captivity had originally been unjust—a pretext which would have allowed the pope to release men from all the obligations of faith and honour he declared that the kingdom of Sicily, having been conferred by the holy see, could not be alienated in exchange for the sovereign’s personal freedom: and on Whitsunday 1289 he crowned Charles as king of all that the house of Anjou had acquired. He granted a tithe of ecclesiastical revenues to Charles for the recovery of Sicily, and to Philip of France for the conquest of Aragon; he denounced Alfonso for the hard terms which he had exacted, and even threatened Edward if, as guardian of the treaty, he should attempt to enforce it. On the other hand, Charles, in return for the favours of Rome, granted all that was required of him as to the relations of the church with the state, and acknowledged that he held his kingdom solely through the pope’s gift. It would seem, however, that he scrupled to avail himself of the release from his oath; but he had recourse to an evasion which, while it was without the pretext of a religious sanction, was in nowise more respectable than that which the pope had approved. He appeared on the frontier of Aragon, announcing his readiness to give himself up on account of the non-fulfillment of his engagement; and, as no one attempted to arrest him, he caused his appearance and his offer to be recorded, professed to consider himself discharged from his obligations, and demanded the restoration of his hostages. The war of Sicily continued. Charles was not strong enough to recover the island, while James, though his fleet, under Roger de Loria, held the mastery of the sea, was not strong enough to expel the Aragonese from their possessions on the Italian mainland. Alfonso died in 1291, having made his peace with the pope; and James succeeded to the kingdom of Aragon, while the government of Sicily devolved on a younger brother, Frederick.

ACRE TAKEN BY THE SARACENS.

From time to time the popes, although chiefly engrossed by the affairs of the West, had urged the sovereigns of Europe to take the cross for the recovery of the Holy Land. Edward of England, especially, had met with indulgence in many things which might have brought him into collision with the church, because it was hoped that his renowned and experienced valour would again be displayed on the soil of Palestine. But both Edward and Philip the Bold regarded the crusade rather as a pretext for getting into their own hands the tithes which the clergy contributed for it than in any other light. The possessions of the Franks in the East had been continually diminishing. Tripoli was wrested from them in 1289, and, partly in revenge for the treacherous execution of some Arab merchants, Acre, the last remnant of the Frankish kingdom, was again besieged in 1291, and fell into the hands of the infidels. The grand-master of the templars was killed, the patriarch of Jerusalem and the grand-master of the hospitallers were drowned in the attempt to embark on board ship, and the total loss in slain and wounded is reckoned at 60,000. Nicolas endeavoured by earnest exhortations to stir up the West to a new crusade but the day for such enterprises was over. Even the clergy showed no zeal in the cause; those of France and England declared that peace must be made between the princes of Christendom before a crusade could be preached with any hope of success. The association of nations was at an end, and the spell which for two hundred years had given the popes so great a power of control over them had lost its efficacy.

Rudolf had continued to administer the affairs of Germany with an honesty of purpose and a vigour which amply justified the hopes of those who had chosen him; but he had never found leisure or inclination to seek the imperial crown at Rome. At a diet held at Frankfort in 1291, he expressed a desire that his son Albert might be elected as king of the Romans. But, although this had usually been granted to reigning sovereigns of Germany, the electors were plied with representations that by a compliance with Rudolf's desire they would admit the principle of hereditary succession, and forego their electoral rights. These representations, although really made in the interest of the papacy by decretalists who were imbued with the doctrines of Gregory IX, had their effect July 15, for the time; and on Rudolf's death, which followed within two months, although Albert was acceptable to most of the electors, he was set aside, chiefly through the influence of his own brother-in-law, Wenceslaus of Bohemia, and Adolphus of Nassau was chosen king. The electors, after the example which the popes had given in their compacts with the emperors, encumbered the election with a number of stipulations which greatly weakened the crown.

Nicolas had incurred a charge of Ghibellinism, partly on account of having made peace with the house of Aragon, but more truly on account of his close alliance with the family of Colonna, for which he had deserted the rival party of the Orsini. In 1290 a member of this family was chosen lord of Rome, and was carried about the city in an imperial chariot, while the people hailed him as Caesar. Under the protection of the Colonnas, Nicolas ventured to remove from Rieti, where he had at first lived, to Rome; and his devotion to the family was symbolized by a caricature, in which he was represented as imprisoned in a column, so that only his mitred head could be seen above it, and with two other columns before him, denoting the two Colonnas who had been admitted into the college of cardinals. Nicolas died in April 1292. He had, it is said, confirmed the letters of John XXI by which the Lyons canon as to the election of popes was revoked; and, whether thus formally abrogated or not, the decree was treated as of no force in the vacancy which ensued.

CHAPTER V.

CELESTINE V AND BONIFACE VIII.

A.D. 1292-1303.

AT the death of Nicolas IV, the college of cardinals consisted of twelve members, who were divided into two parties—the French or Neapolitan and the Italian. These met in a palace which the late pope had built on the Esquiline; but the heats of June compelled them to separate without coming to any agreement in the choice of a successor. The attempt at an election was vainly renewed in one place after another; and in the meantime the factions of the Colonnas and Orsinis fought in the streets for the senatorship, until at length it was arranged that each party should nominate a senator of its own.

The papacy had been vacant two years and three months, when the cardinals met at Perugia in the beginning of July 1294. The most eminent among them were Latino Malebranca, bishop of Ostia, a member of the Dominican order, who stood in high repute for piety, and Benedict Gaetani, cardinal of SS. Sylvester and Martin. Gaetani was a native of Anagni, which within a century had given to the papal chair Innocent III, Gregory IX, and Alexander IV, and he was great-nephew of the last of these. He had probably studied in youth at the university of Paris, and is described as very learned in the Scriptures; he was regarded as unequalled in the knowledge of ecclesiastical law and in experience of affairs, and had been employed on important missions to England, France, Germany, and Portugal. It is said that the consciousness of his abilities and acquirements affected his manners and bearing—that he was arrogant, assuming, and scornful; and to these faults of character it is added that he was very rapacious as to money, “making no conscience of gain.” His labours in the service of successive popes had been rewarded with valuable preferments, and Martin IV had promoted him to the dignity of cardinal. When Charles II of Naples ventured to intrude on the deliberations of the cardinals at Perugia, and to exhort them to a speedy choice, Gaetani boldly rebuked him for interfering with the office of the Holy Spirit.

One day, as the cardinals were assembled, Latino spoke to his brethren of a hermit named Peter of Murrone, whose sanctity was the object of unbounded popular reverence. It was believed that he had been born in a monastic frock, and that every night he was roused for prayer by a celestial bell in tones of incomparable sweetness. Peter had formerly been a Benedictine monk, but had adopted the life of a hermit, and had founded an austere brotherhood of hermits, for which he obtained the sanction of Gregory X, after having travelled on foot from Apulia to Lyons in order to solicit it at the general council of 1274. His dwelling was a narrow cell on the rock of Murrone, near Sulmona, in the Abruzzi. He kept six Lents in the year, and imposed the same observance on his hermits, although to them he allowed mitigations as to diet which he denied himself. A few days later, Latino announced to the cardinals that a holy man had had a vision, threatening heavy judgments unless a pope were elected within a certain time. “I suppose” said Gaetani, “that this is some vision of your Peter of Murrone.” Latino answered that it was even so; the idea of choosing the hermit himself was suddenly suggested, was caught up as offering an escape from the difficulties occasioned by the party connexions of other candidates, and was acted on as if proceeding from inspiration.

The cardinals, however, appear to have soon felt some misgivings as to their choice; for they devolved the duty of announcing it to the new pope on some prelates who were not members of the sacred college. These, as they toiled up the rock of Fumone, were joined by cardinal Peter Colonna, who had undertaken the journey on his own account; and they found the elect pope, an old man of seventy-two, roughly dressed, with a long white beard, and emaciated by austerities. When they produced the act of election, and threw themselves at his feet, the astonished hermit knelt to them in return; he said that, before answering, he must consult God by prayer; but, as the result of this was favourable, he accepted the dignity which was offered to him.

Almost from the moment of his acceptance, it was clear that the new pope was utterly unfit for his office. He knew nothing of men or of affairs; he could speak no language but the vulgar tongue; his only qualification was an ascetic piety, if indeed a piety of so very narrow a character were not rather to be regarded as disqualifying him. Charles of Naples speedily discovered that, by professing humble obedience to the successor of St. Peter, he might be able to use him as a tool. When requested by the cardinals to join them at Perugia, Peter wrote to them, under the influence of Charles, excusing himself on account of his age and of the heat, and summoned them to Aquila, within the Neapolitan territory. There a vast multitude—it is said 200,000 persons—assembled to witness the consecration and coronation of the famous hermit, who took the name of Celestine V. He entered the town riding on an ass, whose reins were held by the king of Naples and his son, Charles, titular king of Hungary; and it is said that, after he had dismounted from the animal, a lame boy was healed by being placed on it. The king’s influence soon became visible in many ways. Celestine released him from an oath which the cardinals had exacted at Perugia, that, if the pope should die in the Neapolitan territory, Charles would not force them to hold their conclave for a fresh election within his dominions. At his instance, thirteen new cardinals were created—a number sufficient to overpower the older members of the college; and of these seven were Frenchmen, while all were devoted to Charles with the exception of John Gaetani, whose promotion was intended to conciliate his uncle, cardinal Benedict. And, when the cardinals urged Celestine to take up his abode at Rome, he preferred to comply with the king’s suggestion by settling at Naples,y which under the Angevine sovereigns had superseded Palermo as the capital of the Sicilian kingdom.

But Celestine was also subject to other mischievous influences. He listened to the hermits of the brotherhood which he had founded, and, not content with bestowing privileges on their order, he preferred some of them to offices for which their rudeness and ignorance made them altogether unfit. He was a passive tool of the curialists and canonists. His patronage was badly bestowed, and his secretaries took advantage of his weakness to practise shameless tricks, so that he was induced to put his name to blank bulls, and in some cases to sign several presentations to the same benefice, while these officials pocketed the fees. He endeavoured to keep up his old manner of life by causing a cell like that on the rock of Murrone to be built in his palace; and into this he sometimes withdrew for days, leaving all business in the hands of some cardinals who had gained his confidence. He wished to make the cardinals imitate his own fashion of sanctity by riding on asses, and to force the peculiar garb of the Celestines on the whole Benedictine order. The pope longed for his old seclusion, while it daily became more and more evident that his tenure of the papacy was likely to produce serious disasters.

Cardinal Benedict Gaetani was supposed to have withstood the election of Celestine, and remained behind the other cardinals at Perugia. But after a time he waited on the pope at Aquila, and speedily established a sway over his feeble mind. It is said that he even practised on Celestine’s credulity by counterfeiting through a pipe a heavenly voice, which charged the pope to resign his office on peril of losing his soul; and, although this tale seems incredible, there can be little doubt that Gaetani was active and subtle in recommending the idea of a resignation. Urged by him and by others, the pope eagerly listened to counsels which opened the hope of a return to his hermitage. He found, from a collection of canons which was placed in his way, that an ecclesiastic might resign with the permission of his superior; but how could this principle be applied to the head of Christendom? The question was proposed to Gaetani, who replied that there was a precedent for resignation in the case of the apostolical father St. Clement; for Clement, he said, after having been appointed to the papacy by St. Peter, resigned it, lest it might seem that a pope might nominate his successor. Suspicions of the pope’s intention began to circulate, and a mob of Neapolitans, stirred up by the fanatical Celestine hermits, appeared under the windows of his palace, loudly clamouring that he should retain his office. For the time he pacified them with equivocal promises; but preparations were made for carrying out his intention, and, at the suggestion of the cardinals, prayers were put up for the discovery of the will of heaven in the matter.

On the 13th of December, the pope, attired in his robes of office, appeared before the consistory of cardinals, and produced an act of resignation, which he read aloud, professing himself unequal to the burden of his office from age and weakness, and desirous to return to the contemplative life to which he had been accustomed. At the suggestion of a cardinal, a decree sanctioning the resignation of popes was drawn up, which Celestine confirmed by his authority. The pope then put off his robes, resumed the rough attire which he had worn as a hermit, and withdrew, while the cardinals entreated his prayers for the church which his act had left without a shepherd. Those who were devoted to Celestine—the members of his hermit brotherhood, and the Franciscan “fraticelli” with whom they had become connected—while they strongly regretted the resignation, viewed it as an act of transcendent humility, which enhanced the glory of his saintly character. But the more general opinion of his time is probably expressed in the terrible scorn of Dante, who places Celestine immediately within the portals of hell, among those who had lived without either praise or infamy, and whom the poet’s guide desires him to pass without bestowing on them the notice of a word.

Ten days after the vacancy of the see, the cardinals held their conclave in the “New Castle” of Naples, and on the same day their choice fell on cardinal Benedict Gaetani, who took the name of Boniface VIII. By what means this result was brought about is not known; but rumour charged the new pope with having made use of much artifice for the purpose. It is said that he secured Charles’ influence over the cardinals of the French party by going to him at night, and telling him that Celestine had been unable to serve him in the Sicilian war for want of knowledge; but that he himself, if the king would help him to the papacy, would serve him with understanding, and to the uttermost of his power.

In so far as regarded Sicily, this promise was amply fulfilled; for to Boniface it was due that the struggle there was kept up when Charles must, but for the pope’s support, have yielded. But in other things Boniface was determined to be his own master, and in opposition to the king’s wishes he set out for Rome. His progress was a triumph, and the most remarkable scene in it was at his native Anagni, where he was received with enthusiasm. On the 23rd of January, his coronation was celebrated with a magnificence beyond all examples To the crown with which Alexander III is supposed to have enriched the tiara, a second crown was now added, in token of the union of secular with spiritual power; and the kings of Naples and of Hungary held the reins of the pope’s white horse, and stood behind his chair at the coronation banquets

Boniface, although five years older than the effete pope whom he had superseded, was in full possession of his mental vigour. He was strong of will, crafty, rapacious, and filled with the highest ideas of hierarchical domination—with a resolution to recover for the papacy all that it had lost under any of his predecessors, and to exalt it more than ever. But in thinking to renew the triumphs of Gregory VII and Innocent III, he overlooked the adverse circumstances which had arisen since their time—the increase of the royal power in France, the English impatience of Roman rule and aspirations after civil and spiritual liberty, the growth of independent thought in the universities; above all, the great influence of the civil lawyers, who had been trained in the principles of the old imperial jurisprudence of Rome, and opposed to the pretensions of the hierarchy a rival system, supported by a rival learning, and grounded on a rival authority.

Boniface began his pontificate by revoking the privileges—provisions, dispensations, commendams, and the like—which Celestine had granted, “not in the plenitude of power,” says a contemporary, “but in the plenitude of simplicity.” But as to Celestine himself there was a difficulty. Men were shocked that a choice which was supposed to have been specially directed by the Holy Spirit should be unceremoniously set aside as mistaken. There were many who questioned the validity of his resignation—the fraticelli, the Celestines, and others who, although free from the fanaticism of these, might be disposed, from whatever motives, to set up the hermit afresh as a claimant of the papal chair; and it was very possible that he might be weak enough to become the tool of such malcontents. Boniface at first committed him to the care of the abbot of Monte Cassino; but Peter soon contrived to escape from the abbot’s custody, and made for his old abode on the Majella. The pope heard with uneasiness that at Sulmona he had been received as a worker of miracles, and that a general enthusiasm in his favour was aroused among the multitudes An order was therefore issued for his arrest; and Peter, after having attempted to escape by embarking on the Adriatic, was seized by some Neapolitan soldiers, and was carried into the presence of his successor. Boniface received him sternly, and ordered him to be conveyed to a castle on the rock of Fumone, where the antipope Burdinus had once been imprisoned; and there a cell was constructed for him like that which he had occupied in earlier days. The treatment which he received in this place is variously reported, according to the prepossessions of the narrators; by some it is said to have been respectful, by others, harsh and strict. The tales which were circulated of his sufferings and of his voluntary mortifications increased the reputation for sanctity which he already possessed, while Boniface was regarded as his oppressor; and when, after ten months of seclusion, Peter died, it was popularly believed that the pope had caused a nail to be driven into his head. Immediately after the hermit’s death, a disciple saw his soul borne up to heaven His body was carried off by the people of Aquila from its burial-place at Ferentino; and it was only by the assurance that his heart was still among them that the men of Ferentino could be restrained from entering into a deadly feud with their neighbours.

Now that Boniface had gained possession of the highest dignity in Christendom, his imperious pride appeared to get the mastery over the prudence and address for which he had before been noted, and his measures were carried on with a violence which could not fail to exasperate those with whom he was brought into collision. Like most of his family, he had hitherto been a Ghibelline; but he now espoused the Guelf interest as being bound up with that of the papacy. He mixed in the envenomed feuds of the Italian cities with the design of crushing the Ghibellines; and by calling in Charles of Valois as pacificator of Tuscany he has earned the denunciation of the great Florentine poet, whose exile, with that of his party, was among the results of the French prince’s intervention.

Boniface required Charles of Naples to renew the oath of homage to the papal see which his father had taken for Sicily, and he devised a plan by which he hoped to secure that kingdom for the Anjou family. According to this scheme, Charles of Valois was to withdraw the pretension to Aragon and Valencia which was founded on the grant of pope Martin; the pope, assuming a right to dispose of these territories, was to regrant them to the hereditary sovereign, James; and in consideration of this favour, the princes of Aragon were to give up all claim to Sicily. But, although James was willing to agree to the arrangement, his brother Frederick, who was the actual governor of Sicily, was implored by the people to save them from a renewal of the French tyranny, and, in company with John of Procida and Roger de Loria, he waited on the pope at Velletri, in order to represent the wishes of the Sicilians. “Art thou” said Boniface to Roger, “that enemy of the church who has made such slaughter of my people?”. “Father,” answered the admiral sternly, “the popes would have me so”. Frederick was tempted with brilliant but shadowy offers, such as a marriage with a daughter of the dispossessed emperor of Constantinople, which would give him a title to the throne of the East. But his companions persuaded him to defer his answer until after he should have returned to Sicily; and, finding that the islanders were determined not to submit to French rule, he was crowned king at Palermo on Easter-day 1296. It was in vain that the pope denounced him, and aided his rival with money. Frederick’s fleets, under Roger de Loria, were victorious over the naval forces of Charles, and part of the mainland was wrested from the French. In 1299, however, the fortune of war was changed. James of Aragon had been appointed standard-bearer of the church and admiral of the papal fleets, and had been invested in Corsica and Sardinia, on undertaking to reduce his former subjects. Roger de Loria, provoked by an unjust suspicion of treason, turned against Frederick, and for a time the Sicilian king had great difficulty in holding his ground. But it would seem that James at length became ashamed of the part which he had taken; and on his leaving Sicily, Frederick’s fortunes began to recover. In 1302, Charles of Valois, leaving the Florentine factions more embittered against each other than when he had undertaken to appease them, passed into Sicily; but Frederick wore him out in an irregular warfare, and compelled him to sue for peace. The misfortunes which had attended the French arms in Flanders induced Charles to submit to terms which he might otherwise have refused, and in 1303 the pope was obliged to agree to a treaty by which Frederick was to be released from all ecclesiastical censures to marry a daughter of his rival, and to hold the kingdom ot “Trinacria” for life, with the provision that at his death it should fall, not to Naples, but to Aragon.

A contest which touched Boniface more nearly than the affairs of Sicily, was his feud with the Colonnas. This family, which was connected with the ancient counts of Tusculum, appears for the first time in history about the beginning of the twelfth century, when one of them was master of Columna among the Alban hills, with other places in the neighbourhood. On the extinction of the Tusculan family, the Colonnas had succeeded to a part of its possessions, and they now held many fortresses in the neighbourhood of Rome, and exercised a powerful influence in public affairs. The devotion of Nicolas IV to this family has been already mentioned, and it may well be supposed that they were not disposed to acquiesce in changes which tended to destroy their influence. Two of the Colonnas, James and his nephew Peter, were cardinals; they had opposed the resignation of Celestine, and, although they had been tricked into consenting to the election of Boniface, it is said that they had opposed his coronation. Various petty causes occurred to increase the differences between the pope and this powerful family, but it is hardly necessary to look for such motives. To Boniface’s new politics the Ghibellinism of the Colonnas made them obnoxious; and it was perhaps the apprehension of consequences from his political conversion that led them to ally themselves with the Aragonese party in Sicily. Boniface, in great exasperation on this account, summoned them to answer, and six days later launched against them a bull in which the whole family were denounced with extraordinary vehemence as enemies of the holy church. The two cardinals were declared to be deposed and excommunicated. Their benefices were taken from them; any ecclesiastic who should acknowledge them in their dignity was to be deprived of all his preferments; any castles or towns which should admit them were to be interdicted; and their nephews to the fourth generation were to be excluded from holy orders.

On the same day when this bull was issued, the cardinals caused a document to be posted on the doors of churches and laid on the high altar of St. Peter’s, denying the validity of Celestine’s resignation, arguing that, even if that resignation were valid, the election of Boniface was irregular, and appealing against the pope to a general council. This daring protest drew forth from Boniface a bull even more violent than the former. The penalties denounced against the cardinals were extended to the whole Colonna family. Their palace at Rome was demolished; all their property was confiscated; they were required to give up all their fortresses, and, on their refusal to do so, a papal army, under the command of cardinal Matthew of Acquasparta, took the field against them with the character of crusaders and the promise of the indulgences granted for a holy war. One after another their castles were reduced, until Palestrina alone held out. As its strength seemed likely to defy all assault, the pope summoned to his counsel count Guy of Montefeltro, who, after a long life of warfare as a Ghibelline commander, during which he had often incurred and defied the heaviest censures of the church, had lately made his peace with it, and had withdrawn into a Franciscan cloister at Ancona. The old warrior, after having surveyed the walls of Palestrina, declared that he could not suggest any means of taking it save by the commission of a great sin. The pope eagerly promised absolution for any sin that he might commit by giving his advice; whereupon Guy told him to “promise much, but perform little.” Boniface, it is said, acted without scruple on this hint. The Colonnas were deluded by a promise that mercy should be shown to them if they would submit. The two cardinals, with two of their kinsmen, Agapetus and James, commonly called Sciarra, waited on the pope at Rieti, arrayed in penitential garb, threw themselves at his feet, implored his pardon, and received an assurance of forgiveness; but when the impregnable fortress had been surrendered into his hands, Boniface ordered that it should be razed to the ground, that the site should be ploughed up and sown with salt, and that, in order to maintain unimpaired the number of the cardinal-bishopricks, a new “papal city” should be built in the neighbourhood. And, while the pope thus gratified his love of vengeance, the spoils of the dispossessed Colonnas enabled him to carry out his plans for the aggrandizement of his family by establishing his nephews as princes, and endowing them largely with territories.

The Colonnas dispersed, some to Sicily, some to France, where king Philip was already embroiled with Boniface, and had entered into communication with them. The two cardinals of the family found a refuge at Genoa; and it is said that, when the archbishop of that city appeared at Rome during the solemnities of Ash Wednesday, the pope expressed his indignation on account of the shelter given to them by throwing ashes into his eyes, and by addressing him in words altered from the form of the church—“Remember, Ghibelline, that thou art ashes, and that with the other Ghibellines to ashes thou shalt return!”.

Towards princes beyond the Alps Boniface displayed the same imperious temper which had been shown in the affairs of Italy and Sicily. When Adolphus of Nassau, king of the Romans, in consequence of wrongs done to him by Philip of France with regard to the imperial kingdom of Arles, had allied himself with England against France, and had received a subsidy of English money, the pope reproved him for having degraded the imperial dignity by lightly engaging in war. Adolphus had never been able to make good his position. The ecclesiastical electors, headed by Gerard of Mayence, were dissatisfied with him for having failed to fulfill the promises extorted at his election; and in June 1297, when a great number of princes were assembled at Prague for the coronation of Wenceslaus of Bohemia, Albert of Austria, the son of Rudolf, was able by large promises to win over Gerard and other electors to his interest. A meeting of electors was held at Mayence on the eve of St. John the Baptist 1298, when Adolphus was declared to be deposed for various misdeeds, and Albert was chosen in his stead. Adolphus, after having disregarded three citations to appear before this assembly, was pronounced contumacious; and on the 2nd of July he lost his life at the battle of Gellheim. A more formal election of Albert was then carried at Frankfort, in a more numerous July 27, assembly of princes; and on the 24th of 1298. August he received the German crown at Aix-la-Chapelle from the hands of the archbishop of Cologne. Both the secular and the ecclesiastical electors took the opportunity to make the new king pay for their support, by grants of lands, privileges, and royalties, in diminution of the rights of the crown. The archbishops of Mayence and Cologne got for their own vassals and for the clergy exemptions from the secular courts, similar to those exemptions which Becket had asserted in England and St. Lewis had denied in France; and Albert was afterwards involved in a quarrel with these archbishops on account of the tolls of the Rhine, which had been granted to them, but were so exacted as to be an intolerable burden to the people.

The electors, in notifying their choice to the pope, stated that Albert had been chosen to the vacancy caused by the death of Adolphus. But although the precedent of deposing a king of Germany had been sanctioned, and even suggested, by Gregory VII, this was the first time that the German princes had taken it upon themselves to act in such a matter without the papal authority; and Boniface, who had already denounced Albert, and was especially bitter against him for having connected himself by marriage with the detested Hohenstaufens, now rejected all his overtures, styled him usurper of the kingdom and murderer of his sovereign, and required him to send envoys to clear his innocence, if they could, before the papal tribunal. But, as we shall see hereafter, a more violent enmity in another quarter soon produced a change of tone towards the king of the Romans.

England and France were now matched against each other under able, vigorous, and ambitious sovereigns—Edward I and Philip IV, who, on account of his personal beauty, is distinguished by the epithet of “the Fair.” But Edward, although often involved in continental wars, gradually concentrated his ambition more and more on the object of making all Britain his own by the acquisition of Wales and Scotland. The English clergy were disposed to second their king in this enterprise, and did not remonstrate against any acts either of injustice or of cruelty which he committed in order to accomplish it. But whereas in the late reign the clergy had incessantly complained of the oppressions which they suffered from the Roman court, while the king had usually endeavoured to use the influence of Rome as a counterbalance to the power and pretensions of his own ecclesiastical subjects, the position of things was now changed. The rapid succession of popes had told unfavourably for Rome; and, now that the papacy was less formidable, the English clergy were reconciled with it, so that in any struggle they were likely to take part with the pope against the king.

In France, on the other hand, an antipapal spirit had been growing, even among the clergy. While the influence of the English crown had been sinking throughout the reigns of John and Henry III.—a period of more than seventy years—the royalty of France, under Philip Augustus and St. Lewis, had greatly increased in strength. And Philip the Fair—a man singularly hard, cold, unscrupulous and selfish, thoroughly imbued with the principles of the civil lawyers as to the absolute rights of sovereignty, although without any wider or more generous feeling of care for the general good of his people—was determined to carry the power of the crown yet further, by asserting its claims both over the great feudatories who interfered with the completeness of his despotism at home, and against any pretensions of the hierarchy which might conflict with it. His hostility to the clergy had, indeed, been manifested early in his reign by an ordinance which excluded them from all share in the administration of the laws, and forbade them to appear in courts as advocates, except for chapters and convents. Although many canons of the church might have been produced to the same effect, it was an alarming circumstance that the prohibition now came from the side of the secular power.

Both Edward and Philip were reduced to great difficulties for the means of paying the expenses of their wars. Edward had appropriated to his own use the tenths collected for a crusade. In 1290 he had expelled all Jews from England, and, in consideration of this harshness against a detested people, had got a large subsidy from both laity and clergy. In the following year, when a new levy of a tenth for the Holy Land had been sanctioned by Nicolas IV, the king had taken the opportunity of making a fresh assessment of property at a higher rate than before; and he seized the money collected in cathedrals and monasteries, under pretence of a loan, although much of it was never restored. After this, he demanded of the clergy one-half of their income. It was in vain that they offered a double tenth, or that, in yielding to his full demand, they begged for a repeal of the statute which had been passed early in the reign for the purpose of checking bequests to the church; the king replied that he could not repeal a law which had been enacted by the consent of his parliament, and the clergy were obliged to be content with a redress of some minor grievances. Moreover, to the great annoyance of the Roman court, he had always disowned the obligation to pay the ignominious tribute which had been exacted from his grandfather, John.

In matters of finance Philip relied greatly on two Florentine bankers who were settled in France, Musciatto and Biccio dei Francesi, and by their advice he had recourse to various arts for raising money. He tampered with the coinage; he got the plate belonging to his nobles into his hands under colour of a sumptuary law. In 1291 he imprisoned all foreign traders, and compelled them to pay for ransom. He expelled the Jews in 1301; but in five years they had returned, and had become so wealthy as to draw on themselves a fresh confiscation and expulsion. But more money was still wanted, and Philip resolved to lay heavy taxes on the clergy, whose wealth had long been increasing in proportion to the increased security of property which had been a result of the late reigns. In requiring the clergy to pay taxes, Philip could plead the example of popes, who had always taxed them for their own purposes, and had often allowed princes engaging in crusades to levy ecclesiastical tenths. But the impost required by Philip, which bore the name of maltôte, was new in form, as well as excessive in amount —at first a hundredth, and then a fiftieth, part of the whole property.

By these exactions of the French and English kings Boniface was roused to issue, on the 25th of February 1296, a bull which from its first words is known by the name of Clericis laicos— not naming the sovereigns against whom it was directed, but indicating them in a manner which could not be mistaken. In this document—which was indeed founded on a canon of the fourth Lateran council, but in which Boniface carried his prohibitions out more rigidly than Innocent III had ventured to attempt—it is complained that the laity are apt to encroach on the church, and that some prelates pusillanimously acquiesce in their encroachments without having obtained the license of the apostolic see. The pope, therefore, decrees that all who without such license shall have paid or promised any portion of their revenues to laymen, under whatever name or pretext, and all sovereigns who shall have imposed or received such payments, or shall have seized the money deposited in churches, shall ipso facto incur excommunication, from which they shall not be released except on their death-beds without the special authority and license of the apostolic see.

Neither in England nor in France was the sovereign disposed to submit tamely to this. Edward held a parliament at Bury St. Edmund’s in the end of November, when the laity contributed a subsidy of a twelfth towards the Scottish war, but the clergy, on being asked for a tenth, pleaded that they were exhausted by the taxation of the preceding year, and produced the pope’s late bull as exempting them. In this they were headed by the primate, Robert Winchelsey, a man of high ecclesiastical reputation, of strong hierarchical principles, and of very resolute character, who had been on his journey to Rome for the pall when the exaction of one-half was enforced in the preceding year. The parliament was adjourned until the middle of January, when the clergy met in St. Paul’s, London. There the tenth was again demanded, with the addition of a fine for the late contumacy; and when the bull Clericis laicos was produced on the part of the clergy, it was met by a letter from the king, charging them to refrain from doing anything to the prejudice of the crown. The primate proposed to refer the question to Rome; and Edward, on being informed of this, burst into fury. The chief justice, Roger le Brabazon, told the clergy that, by refusing to contribute towards the expenses of the government, they excluded themselves from its protection and from civil privileges. After some further but useless negotiation, all lay fees of ecclesiastics were ordered to be confiscated. The property of Christchurch, Canterbury, and even the archbishop’s riding-horses, were seized; and the monks of the cathedral were reduced to submission by want of the necessaries of life. At this crisis two lawyers and two Dominicans excited some attention by offering, at a council held in St. Paul’s, to maintain that the clergy were entitled to aid the crown with money in time of war notwithstanding the pope’s prohibition. The archbishop of York and others offered to compound by paying a fourth of their income, in order to pacify the king; most of the clergy followed the example, and the bishop of Lincoln, although he refused to pay, acquiesced in allowing some of his friends to pay for him. The primate Winchelsey alone continued to hold out; he declared his brethren excommunicate, and withdrew to the parish of Chartham, near Canterbury, where he lived in the simplest fashion with the attendance of a single chaplain.

But at this time the Scots not only repelled the English invaders of their country, but in their turn carried fire and sword into the northern counties of England, while the king was obliged by the threatening aspect of France to resolve on going in person to the war in Flanders. By these common dangers all orders of the English were drawn together, and the stubborn spirit of the primate was brought to accept a compromise. He attended a parliament at Westminster, where a reconciliation was effected between Edward and the various orders of his subjects. But in consideration of this, the king had to make important concessions; the Magna Charta and the Forest charter were confirmed with new securities; and the privilege was secured both for the clergy and for the laity that they should not be taxed except with their own consent. In the following year the archbishop denounced an excommunication against all who should invade ecclesiastical property, infringe the great charter, lay violent hands on clerks or imprison them, and against the Scots who should invade England, or commit acts of waste and violence, with all who should abet them.

In France the king met the papal bull by publishing an ordinance (August 17, 1296) which forbade the exportation of all gold and silver, jewels, arms, horses, or other munitions of war from the realm. By this ordinance, not only were many Italian ecclesiastics deprived of their revenues from benefices which they held in France, but the pope himself was cut off from the sources of income which he had enjoyed in that country. Boniface replied to this measure by a bull (Sep. 21) known by the title of Ineffabilis, in which the full assertion of papal and priestly authority is remarkably blended with professions of meekness, and of fatherly care for the king. Blandishments and threats, arguments from spiritual and from temporal considerations, are mixed in a style which, if it may strike us as incongruous, faithfully reflects the various influences of Boniface’s position and of his personal character, of the secular and the spiritual pretensions which were now combined in the papacy. He affects to doubt the reports which had reached him as to the king’s late edict and the intention of it; if it aimed at an invasion of the church’s rights, it was to be described as nothing less than insane, and as having brought the author within the sentence of excommunication. He attributes it to the influence of evil counsellors. He tells Philip that by his oppressive taxation he has chilled the affection of his subjects; that by his aggressions he has provoked the hostility of his neighbours the kings of the Romans, of England, and of Spain; what, then, could be expected, if, when already beset by such perils, he should make the apostolic see also his enemy? The pope dwells pathetically on his long, anxious, watchful care for Philip—his arduous labours before he had attained the papacy, the sleepless nights which he had spent in thinking for the king's good; he speaks of the process which was then going on for the canonization of Lewis IX, and of the melancholy degeneracy of that saintly prince’s grandson. If the ordinance was meant as a retaliation for the Clericis laicos, that document had been quite misunderstood. It was only a re-enactment of former canons, with the specification of a penalty; it did not forbid ecclesiastics to contribute towards the public service, but merely ordered that this should not be done without the pope’s special permission—a provision justified by the late exorbitant taxation of France. To say that the clergy were not now at liberty to give anything to the king was a quibbling misinterpretation of it. The pope declares that he and his brethren were prepared to suffer any extremities for the cause of the church; but that, rather than see the kingdom of France, so dear (yea, so exceedingly dear) to the holy see, in danger, he would not only allow the king to raise money from the clergy, but would give up the crucifixes and sacred vessels of churches. And he concludes by saying that he sends the bishop of Viviers to treat with Philip as his representative.

The king replied in a document which strongly betrays the hand of his legist advisers, and enunciates doctrines which clash violently against those laid down by Boniface as to the relations of the spiritual and the secular powers. Before there were any clergy, he ventures to assert, the kings of France possessed the guardianship of their kingdom and the right of legislation. The church consists, not of clergy alone, but of laity also; and all those whom the Saviour by his death has freed are alike entitled to liberty. The pontiffs of Rome enjoy many special liberties; but this is through the grant of secular princes, and such liberties cannot do away with the rights of sovereigns, forasmuch as the things which are Caesar’s are by Divine command to be rendered unto Caesar. No member of a commonwealth may refuse to contribute its share for the government and defence of the whole; and since the property of the clergy is liable to be attacked, it is astounding that the vicar of Christ should contradict the Saviour’s words by forbidding clerks, under pain of anathema, to give their fair proportion, while they are freely allowed to spend their money on luxury and revelry. The justice of the national cause is asserted as against the sovereigns whom the pope had spoken of; and the explanation which Boniface had given of his prohibition to pay taxes is retorted on him by a similar explanation of the prohibition to export money and other valuable things from France.

1296-7. BONIFACE AND PHILIP.

The pope was now in the heat of his struggle with the Colonnas, and was therefore not disposed to provoke the French king. In February 1297 he wrote both to Philip and to the clergy of France, declaring afresh that his bull had been perverted by malicious misinterpretation, and that he allowed the clergy to help their king by their contributions. And in another letter to the king, after laying down the principle that the legislator is the best interpreter of his own law, he declares that ecclesiastics may pay taxes, if they do so without compulsion; that a requisition on the part of the government does not interfere with the freedom of the payment, and that in case of necessity the king may at once levy taxes without asking the papal permission; nor did the pope pretend to interfere with the feudal obligations of the clergy. But at the same time he ordered his legates to denounce the king’s officials, or even the king himself, as excommunicate, if he or they should interfere with the transmission of the papal revenue from France. The pope became aware that he could not reckon on the French clergy as his allies; for the archbishop of Reims and his suffragans addressed to him a supplication that he would not continue an interference which disturbed the peace between them and their sovereign. A good understanding appeared to be again established. The pope felt the importance of retaining as his ally that power which had always been the chief supporter of the papacy. He granted Philip the ecclesiastical tenth for three years; he promised to help the king’s brother, Charles of Valois, to the throne of Germany and to the imperial crown; and he published a bull for the canonization of the king’s grandfather, Lewis IX, which the kings of France had for twenty years been endeavouring to obtain, but which had been hitherto prevented by the frequent vacancies in the papacy. It is remarkable that Boniface, in his later references to this canonization, always speaks of it as if it were not so much a tribute due to the merits of Lewis, as a favour by which the holy see had entitled itself to the gratitude of the saintly king’s descendants.

Boniface, in the beginning of his pontificate, had assumed the power of arbitrating between the kings of France and England by sending two cardinals, who were authorized to treat with them, and to release them from any oaths or engagements. But the kings had not been willing to admit such a claim—more especially Philip, who, before the papal letters were read, required the legates to acknowledge his exclusive sovereignty over France; and the legation was without any effect. The pope now again urged his mediation on the kings through the generals of the two great mendicant orders; but although Edward, hard pressed in the Flemish war, welcomed, and even solicited, his interference, Philip would only admit it on condition that the arbiter should not act as pope, but as a private person. Boniface accepted the condition, and on the 30th of June 1298 he issued his award—“as a private person, and Master Benedict Gaetani.” But notwithstanding this profession, the document was in the form of a bull, which was promulgated in a public consistory, and it ordered that the territories which were to be given up on either side should be committed to the keeping of the pope’s officers. Philip was very indignant, both because the substance of the judgment was in his opinion too favourable to Edward, and because Boniface had foisted into it that official character which had been expressly excluded by the terms of the arbitration. When the bull was read by a bishop before the king and his council, Count Robert of Artois, Philip’s brother, snatched it from the reader’s hand, and threw it into the fire, swearing that he would not allow the pope to treat the king and the kingdom so ill; and such was the general feeling of the French nobles.

Philip saw that a severe contest with Boniface was at hand, and began to make preparations for it. He entered into close relations with the banished Colonnas, and entertained in his court two members of the family—Stephen, a nephew of the elder cardinal, and James, who was known by the name of Sciarra—a man who carried to an extreme the rude lawlessness for which the race was noted, and whom it is said that Philip had redeemed from captivity among pirates. The king also concluded a formal alliance with Albert of Austria, whom the pope had steadily refused to acknowledge as king of the Romans. This alliance was “against every man”—a phrase which clearly included the pope, if it was not even intended expressly to point at him; and the announcement of it which Philip sent to Boniface—stating that the treaty set him at liberty for a crusade (which Boniface well knew that he did not seriously intend to undertake)—was rather alarming than assuring.

But at this time Boniface was engaged in a celebration which in great measure diverted his thoughts from other affairs, and which displayed the papacy in its greatest splendour. In the beginning of the year 1299, expectations began to be vaguely current at Rome that the last year of the century would be distinguished by extraordinary spiritual privileges; and on Christmas-day St. Peter’s was filled by crowds, all eagerly expecting something, although not knowing what this was to be. How these expectations were suggested, does not appear; for the assertion on which they rested, that every previous centenary year had been distinguished in like manner, was utterly fabulous. But the craving for indulgences, which had been excited by the crusades, was as strong as ever, although the crusades were at an end; and it turned not unnaturally towards Rome for that satisfaction which was no longer to be sought in the Holy Land. At length, it is said, the report of the general agitation reached the ears of the pope, who thereupon caused an inquiry to be made; and, although the written documents did not give such testimony as was desired, the defect was readily accounted for by ascribing it to the supposed loss of records, and to the troubles of former times. Boniface, easily satisfied on this point, took up the matter with an energetic zeal which has led some writers to suppose that the first suggestion of the jubilee was his own; and after a time living evidence was produced in favour of the general belief. One very aged man declared that, as a boy of seven, he had attended the jubilee a hundred years before, and gave testimony as to the indulgences then bestowed. Another old impostor, a Savoyard of respectable station, appeared at Rome carried by his two sons, and told a similar story; and it was said that other survivors of the last jubilee were still to be found in France.

On the 22nd of February a bull was issued, promising indulgences of extraordinary fullness to all who, within the current year, should with due penitence and devotion visit the tombs of St. Peter and St. Paul—Romans for thirty successive days, and strangers for fifteen—and directing that the jubilee should in future be celebrated every hundredth year. But from the benefits of this indulgence the enemies of the church were to be excluded; and among these were expressly named Frederick of Sicily, the Colonnas, and those who should receive them—a description which included Philip of France. From every part of Latin Christendom crowds of persons of all ranks began to pour towards Rome. The chronicler John Villani, who was present, says that there were always 200,000 strangers in the city; another chronicler tells us that it seemed as if an army were marching each way at all hours along a certain street; and a more illustrious eye-witness, Dante, who visited Rome at this time as an envoy from the republic of Florence, draws a simile from the multitudes who passed to and from St. Peter’s along the bridge of St. Angelo, which, in order to avoid confusion, was divided by a partition. The poet was not conciliated either towards the papacy or towards the pope by the scenes which he witnessed at the jubilee.

The measures taken for the sustenance of the vast multitude were so successful that Boniface’s eulogists find in them a parallel to the multiplication of the loaves and fishes in the Gospel story. Rents were indeed high, and, in consequence of the great number of horses which were brought together, the price of fodder was increased; but by taking timely advantage of an unusually copious harvest, the pope was able to provide such stores of food that the pilgrims found it both plentiful and cheap. At Christmas, when the year of jubilee naturally ended, the time of indulgence was extended by a papal letter to the following Easter, and a share of its privileges was declared to be bestowed on such pilgrims as died on their journey. The wealth which flowed into the papal coffers from the jubilee was enormous. Offerings were heaped up on the altars of the basilicas which contained the tombs of St„ Peter and St. Paul. A chronicler tells us that at St. Paul’s he saw two of the clergy with rakes in their hands, employed day and night in “raking together infinite money”; and, although Boniface bestowed a portion of the receipts in adding to the property of two great churches, there can be no reasonable doubt that much remained in his own hands.

It is said that Boniface, after having appeared in pontifical robes at the opening of the jubilee, showed himself next day in the attire of an emperor, with a sword in his hand, quoting the text “Behold here are two swords”; and that when ambassadors from Albert appeared for the purpose of entreating that he would relent towards their master, and bestow on him the imperial crown, he received them sitting on his throne with a sword at his side, and the “crown of Constantine” on his head, and, laying his hand on the hilt of the sword, answered that he himself was Caesar and emperor, as well as successor of St Peter. The pope was now at the height of his greatness. Although some of his pretensions had not passed without question, he had never yet been foiled in any considerable matter; and, while the enthusiasm of the jubilee filled his treasury, the veneration of the congregated multitudes waited on him as uniting the highest spiritual and temporal dominion.

AFFAIRS OF SCOTLAND

It would be out of place to relate here in detail the course of affairs in Scotland after the death of Alexander III;—how Edward, acting as arbiter between the rival claimants of the crown, had set up the weak John Balliol, who, at his coronation, did homage to the king of England as his suzerain; how Balliol, on displaying some feeling of the independent rights of his kingdom, was ignominiously compelled by his patron to resign, and, while Edward proceeded to treat Scotland as a fief which had become vacant, and so was at the disposal of the over-lord, a national resistance was organized under William Wallace, a private gentleman, who, although the great nobles of the country in general stood aloof from him, for a time heroically made head against the English, and even carried the war into the enemy’s land. But the overthrow of the Scots at the battle of Falkirk had compelled Wallace to seek a refuge in France, and Edward required the Scots to do homage to him as suzerain. On this, the Scottish regency, acting in Balliol’s name, appealed to Boniface, claiming the pope as the immediate suzerain of the kingdom—a connection of which traces had not been wanting in earlier times, and which may indeed have naturally arisen out of a wish to provide against the encroachments of a powerful neighbour, by admitting a subjection which other nations also acknowledged, and in which there was not necessarily anything degrading. To such an appeal Boniface was not likely to turn a deaf ear; and, having been in England with cardinal Ottobuoni in his legation, thirty years before, he was able to discuss the matter with some knowledge of the circumstances. wrote to Edward that Scotland, as an ancient catholic country, had always been immediately subject to the holy see; that her kings had owned no feudal subjection to the English crown except for such lands as they held within the English border; that the independence of Scotland appeared from the fact that a legate commissioned to England could not without a fresh commission enter the more northern kingdom. The king was desired to release the Scottish bishops and ecclesiastics whom he held in prison, and, if he still supposed himself to have any title to Scotland, he was required to send representatives, with evidence in behalf of his claim, within six months to the papal court, to which Boniface professed to reserve all such questions.

This document was entrusted to the archbishop of Canterbury, who, not without some serious peril, conveyed it to Edward, whom he found besieging Caerlaverock castle. On hearing the contents of the bull, with some words of the archbishop about Jerusalem and Sion protecting their people, the king is said to have burst out, “By God’s blood, for Sion’s sake will I not hold my peace, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest, so long as breath is in my nostrils, from defending with all my might what all the world knows to be my right!”. He deferred his formal answer; but he practically showed his regard for the papal mandate by proceeding to require the homage of a new bishop of Glasgow, and he took measures for putting his pretensions into the most imposing shape. Letters were addressed to abbots and deans, desiring them to search the archives of their churches for evidence on the subject, and to send it to a parliament which was to be held at Lincoln; and with a like object each of the universities was desired to send some of its learned men to the same parliaments. The parliament met accordingly; five representatives from Oxford and five from Cambridge asserted the legality of the king’s claims over Scotland, a hundred and four nobles, headed by Bigod earl of Norfolk and Bohun earl of Hereford (usually opponents of the crown), subscribed a document in which it was declared that the pope’s claim was a novelty; that England had always held the superiority over Scotland, without being responsible to any one; that, even if the king were disposed to argue the question before the pope, they would not allow him to stoop so low; and they beg the pope to leave him undisturbed in the enjoyment of his rights. Edward himself wrote to request that Boniface would not be misled by false information; and (in order, as he professed, to explain the truth of the case, not as acknowledging the pope’s jurisdiction) he entered into a statement of his claims, in which the suzerainty of England was deduced from the fabulous history of Geoffrey of Monmouth. Boniface was too deeply engaged in his quarrel with France to reply to these representations. But he put the English case into the hands of the Scottish ambassador, Baldred Bisset, and in due time the English claim, derived from Brute the Trojan and other such legendary worthies, was confronted by one which rested on the equally authentic history of the princess Scota, daughter of king Pharaoh of Egypt, while the papal suzerainty was deduced from Constantine’s donation, which bestowed all islands on pope Sylvester and his successors.

1300-1. DIFFERENCES WITH FRANCE.

The differences with Philip had become more complicated and more serious. In 1299 the pope had suspended two bishops in the south of France, and Philip had attempted to exercise the regale by seizing the incomes of their sees as in a case of vacancy. But the pope objected on the ground that suspension did not vacate a see, and, with a view to this and other affairs, he sent as legate into France Bernard de Saisset, bishop of Pamiers. The see of Pamiers—a city which was formerly subject to the counts of Foix, and, in consequence of the Albigensian war, had passed first to the elder Simon de Montfort, and afterwards to the crown—had been created by Boniface in 1296, without asking the king’s consent; and it had been bestowed on Bernard, who was abbot of a monastery which became the cathedral, and who, as abbot, was lord of the city— an arrogant, violent, and turbulent man. The choice of such an envoy seems to indicate an intention to irritate the king; and when Bernard remonstrated as to the treatment of the count of Flanders, whom Philip had treacherously imprisoned, with his wife and daughter, the king reminded the legate that he was his subject. The legate replied that, although Pamiers was in France, he acknowledged no lord but the pope; whereupon the king in anger dismissed him, and sent him back to Rome. Boniface, however, took no other notice of his offence than by sending him home to his diocese.

Philip, provoked by this, caused information to be collected against Bernard—some of it, it is said, by torturing his servants—and the bishop was brought to trial before a parliament at Senlis, where Peter Flotte, one of the ablest of the king’s legal counsellors, brought forward a monstrous set of charges against him—that he had spoken in gross disparagement of the king, both as to his descent and as to his personal character; that he had abused the French nation as compared with the men of the South; that he had entered into treacherous correspondence with the king of England; that he had denied that Pamiers was in the kingdom of France, and had attempted to stir up the count of Foix and others to revolt; that he had declared, on the authority of a pretended prophecy of St. Lewis, that the kingdom of France was to come to an end under the reigning sovereign. Of these charges some are utterly incredible, and their character throws suspicion over the rest. But the bishop, notwithstanding his denials, was condemned, and the king made him over to his metropolitan, the archbishop of Narbonne, for degradation. The archbishop, however, who was under special obligations to the pope for having supported him against Philip on a former occasion, insisted that the bishop should not be treated as a prisoner, although he ordered him to be watched; and the pope required that he should be sent to Rome for judgment. The chancellor, Peter Flotte, was sent to urge the king’s suit against the bishop, and with him was William of Nogaret, a lawyer of acute mind and daring spirit, who is said to have been animated by the remembrance that his grandfather had been burnt at Toulouse as a heretic. These envoys were instructed to charge the bishop, among other things, with having spoken violently, not only against the king, but against the pope himself.

The mission served only to bring out more distinctly the irreconcilable difference between the parties. At the last interview, it is said that Boniface angrily declared that he possessed the temporal power as well as the spiritual; to which Peter Flotte replied, “Your power is only in words; but ours is real.”

The pope, greatly incensed, issued four documents which bear date on the same day. In one of these, he desired Philip to release the bishop of Pamiers, to allow him to go freely to Rome, and to give up his confiscated property. By another, he summoned the prelates and other representatives of the French clergy to a council which was to be held at Rome in the following November, with a view to the redress of the French church’s grievances—a daring and unprecedented assumption of power over a prince’s ecclesiastical subjects. A third document, known by the title of Salvator mundi, suspended all privileges which had been granted to Philip or to his predecessors. But the most noted of the four was a long letter addressed to Philip, and beginning with the words Ausculta, fili. In this, affecting a tone of parental solicitude, Boniface solemnly reminds the king of his Christian profession. He lays down that God had set the pope over kings and kingdoms, “to pluck down, destroy, scatter, rebuild, and plant.” He reproves Philip for the faults of his government—that he had oppressed his people, falsified the coinage, invaded the patronage of ecclesiastical dignities, seized the income of vacant sees, prevented intercourse with the Roman court, interfered with the immunities of the clergy, both as to taxation and as to jurisdiction; and that, although already often admonished as to these faults, he had not corrected them. The pope contrasts Philip’s apathy as to the cause of the Holy Land with the zeal of his crusading ancestors; he warns him against the deceits of evil counsellors, who “like false prophets” lead him astray; and he invites him to appear in person or by proxy before the council which was about to assemble at Rome.

Philip, instead of allowing this manifesto to provoke him to any rash action, proceeded to meet it with a calculating coolness. After deep consideration with his counsellors, he resolved to drop the affair of the bishop of Pamiers, lest other bishops of his kingdom should be alienated from him, and to concentrate all his energies on a direct opposition to the pope. Bernard de Saisset was allowed to accompany the envoy who had brought the papal letters on his return to Rome. The bull Ausculta was read before a crowd of nobles and knights assembled in the royal court, when the king declared that he would not acknowledge his own sons for his heirs if they admitted any authority over the kingdom of France, save that of God alone; and a general feeling of indignation was aroused among the hearers.

About the same time another document was circulated, which is known by the name of the Short Letter or Lesser Bull. In substance, this contained nothing but what was in the Ausculta fili; but it is a question whether it really proceeded from the pope, or whether—with its peremptory shortness, its neglect of the usual greetings, its abrupt and rude manner of stating the most offensive Roman claims, its omission of those charges which, as stated in the Ausculta, might have excited Philip’s subjects against him—it ought not to be considered as an abridgment, drawn up by some of the king’s legal counsellors for the purpose of rendering the pope odious to the commonalty of France. And with this letter was circulated an answer, in the king’s name, of equal brevity, meeting the pope’s assertions with direct contradiction in a tone of coarse and even vulgar insolence. From these short documents the popular opinion as to the contents of the larger bull, and as to the merits of the quarrel between the pope and the king, was derived; and, trusting to the impression thus produced, Philip, a fortnight after the reading of the Ausculta before his nobles, caused it to be burnt in his own presence, and the burning to be proclaimed with the sound of the trumpet through the streets of Paris.

Philip had now assured himself that, notwithstanding all the reasons for dissatisfaction which he might have given his subjects, he could rely on them in a contest with the pope; and on the 10th of April 1302 an assembly of the estates of the realm met in the cathedral of Paris. It was the first time that the representatives of the towns—the third estate—had been summoned to sit with the clergy and nobles; and it has been remarked that, whereas in England the representation of the commons had been instituted by the barons in their contest with the crown, in France it was the most despotic of her mediaeval sovereigns that called them in as allies in a struggle for national independence against the pope. But Philip was safe in reckoning that, in their delight and surprise at finding themselves acknowledged as a part of the national legislature, the commons would be ready to lend themselves as passive instruments of his will.

The proceedings were opened by the chancellor, Peter Flotte, in a speech which was intended to conciliate all the orders by enlarging on the encroachments which each of them had suffered at the hands of the papacy. To the clergy he pointed out that the pope bestowed French churches on foreigners who did not reside on their preferments; that he deprived the bishops of their patronage, interfered with the exercise of their duties, preyed on them by making it necessary that they should continually offer presents, and taxed the church enormously by exactions of all sorts. He asked the assembled representatives of France whether the kingdom was to stand immediately under God, or to be subject to the pope. The impetuous count Robert of Artois declared that, if the king were disposed to submit to the pope, the nobles would not submit; and Peter du Bose, a Norman lawyer, brought a written charge of heresy against Boniface, for having attempted to deprive the king of that which he held from God. The clergy yielded to the general feeling—perhaps the more readily because the overwhelming force of the lay orders furnished an excuse which might be pleaded to the pope; but they asked leave to attend the proposed council at Rome, and met with a refusal. Each of the orders drew up a letter—that of the clergy addressed to the pope; the others, to the cardinals. The clergy, while they approach the pope with a tone of deep respect, are careful to inform him of the hard things which had been said against him by the king and the nobles; they speak clearly of the many late encroachments of Rome on France; and they explain that they had been driven by the difficulties of their position to declare themselves bound by feudal duty to the king. The barons and the third estate wrote in their native language. The nobles dwell on the violent and wrongful acts of the existing pope, which, they say, had disturbed the ancient friendship between the Roman church and the kingdom of France, and they declare that nothing could induce them to seek redress of any grievances which they might have from the pope, or from any other authority than their king. The letter of the third estate is unfortunately lost.

To the letters of the lay orders the cardinals replied by denying the truth of some charges which had been brought against the pope, and by justifying his proceedings as to other points. “We wish you”, they told the nobles, “to be assured that our lord, the chief pontiff, never wrote to the king that he was temporally subject to him in respect of his kingdom, and ought to hold it from him… Wherefore, the proposition which Peter Flotte has advanced, had a sandy and false foundation, and, therefore, the superstructure must of necessity fall.” The pope’s answer to the clergy (Verba delirantis) was in a more violent strain. The words of a daughter who is beside herself, he says, however monstrous they may be, cannot stain the purity of her mother, or change the mother’s love into hatred. Yet, while vehemently rebuking the French clergy for their weakness in yielding to secular force, and allowing themselves to be misled by “that Belial, Peter Flotte, half-seeing in body, and wholly blind in mind,” he, like the cardinals, declares that his former statement as to the relations of the papacy and the French kingdom had been misunderstood; that he had never claimed temporal suzerainty over France, as over some other kingdoms. But, he said, no one could deny that the king was subject to him “in respect of sin”; the temporal power must be under the spiritual; for to hold otherwise would be the error of believing in the existence of two independent principles.

Soon after the date of this letter, a consistory was held at Rome at which the same line was taken by the speakers. The cardinal of Porto, Matthew Acquasparta, denied that the pope had ever said that the king ought to consider himself as holding his crown under the church. There are, he said, two jurisdictions—the spiritual, which belongs to the pope as chief, and the temporal, which belongs to kings and emperors. The pope may take cognizance of all temporal matters, and may judge of them in respect of sin : and thus temporal jurisdiction belongs to him of right, as vicar of Christ and of St. Peter. But it does not belong to him as to use and actual execution; wherefore, it was said to St. Peter, “Put up thy sword into the sheath”.

The cardinal’s speech was followed by one from the pope, who began in a conciliatory tone—setting out with the text “What God hath joined together, let no man put asunder,” and professing an earnest regard for the welfare of the king of France. But by degrees Boniface’s passion broke out. He spoke vehemently of the king’s offences against the church; of his evil counsellors, especially Peter Flotte, “that Ahithophel, that man of the devil, whom God hath already punished in part—partly blind in body, wholly blind in mind—that man of vinegar and gall, a man to be accounted and condemned as an heretic,” who had falsified his letter, or had given the king a false idea of it. He disavowed, as before, all intention of encroaching on the king’s rights, and repeated the distinction as to a jurisdiction “in respect of sin”; he invidiously pointed out the dangers which threatened Philip from his neighbours, and applied to the French the words which St. Bernard had used of the Romans—“As you love no one, so no one loves you.” And he ended with a declaration that, as his predecessors had already deposed three kings of France, so now, in case of obstinacy, he would depose Philip “like a groom.” The ambassadors of France had been invited to the consistory, and heard the pope’s language against their sovereigns.

The difficulties to which the pope had referred as encompassing Philip were now very serious. At Bruges, which he had reduced to subjection, there had been an outbreak against the French; the spirit of insurrection spread rapidly among the Flemings, and at the battle of Courtray, on the 11th of July 1302, a great defeat was inflicted by the despised burghers on the army of France—Robert of Artois and Peter Flotte, two of the most conspicuous enemies of the papacy, being among the slain. The pope had encouraged the Flemings, and had even supplied them with money, while Philip had renewed, in more stringent terms than before, his order against the exportation of gold and silver from France.

Encouraged by the sight of Philip’s difficulties, forty-five prelates of various classes, and headed by the archbishop of Tours, defied the king’s authority by setting out for the council which had been summoned to meet at Rome in November. Philip, in great indignation, summoned them to return. At the council, excommunication was denounced against any one—even if he were a king or an emperor—who should hinder or molest persons going to or returning from the papal court and a constitution, known by the name of Unam sanctam, was issued, in which Boniface, while adhering to the limitations of his power which he had before laid down, declared very strongly its superiority over all temporal authority. When, he says, the apostles said, “Behold, here are two swords,” the Lord did not answer “It is too much,” but “It is enough”; therefore, the temporal as well as the spiritual power is in the church, and any one who denies that St. Peter has the temporal sword, misunderstands the words “Put up thy sword into the sheath.” The spiritual sword is to be exercised by the church, the material sword for the church; the one, by the hands of priests, the other, by the hands of kings and soldiers. The temporal must be subject to the spiritual power as the lower to the higher; the spiritual power has the right to judge the other, according to the prophecy of Jeremiah (I. 10)— “See, I have set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, to build, and to plant.” Earthly power is accountable to the spiritual power; but no spiritual power is accountable, except to a higher power of the same kind, and the highest is accountable to God alone.

CARDINAL LE MOINE.

There was still on both sides an unwillingness to proceed to extremities. Philip declared himself ready to submit to the arbitration of the dukes of Burgundy and Brittany, while the pope sent as legate John le Moine, cardinal of SS. Marcellinus and Peter, a Frenchman by birth, and highly regarded by the king. The legate was charged to restrain Philip from his evil courses, especially from his oppression of the church, and to summon him to appear by proxy before the court of Rome in order to answer for having burnt the papal bull; but there was reason to suspect that the real object of his mission was to obtain information for the pope, and to tamper with the clergy who adhered to the king. Philip’s answers were vague and unsatisfactory. He affected to suppose that the charge of having destroyed a bull referred to a document which concerned the church of Laon; and he declared that he had torn up that bull as being useless —not out of any disrespect to the pope. The mission of Cardinal le Moine, therefore, came to nothing; and Boniface complained of the manner in which his charge had been met, and of the treatment which his legate had experienced.

Each party now looked forward to a struggle for the sake of which all lesser differences must be sacrificed. Philip was fain to make peace with England, by ceding Aquitaine to Edward, and by abandoning his allies the Scots. Boniface, after all the indignation which he had expressed against Frederick of Sicily, and although he had lately refused to confirm a peace which Charles of Valois had made with his rival, acknowledged the Aragonese prince as king of Trinacria, and admitted him to fealty. And now the pope was even glad to overlook all the defects on which he had before insisted in Albert’s title as king of the Romans. He invited him to send ambassadors to the papal court; he dwelt on the merits of his father Rudolf towards the apostolic see; he annulled by a formal document all irregularities which might affect his claims; he extolled the imperial dignity as a sort of secular papacy, to which all other princes ought to be subject, and through the abeyance of which it was that the king of France had presumed, with the characteristic pride of his nation, to claim independence of any superior. The princes of the empire were charged to pay allegiance to Albert; and Albert, glad to obtain such countenance on any terms, subscribed to all that his father had conceded in favour of Rome. He acknowledged that Charlemagne had received the empire from the holy see, nay, that the electors derived their power from the papacy; and he promised to defend the pope against all injury.

On the 13th of April, Boniface, having received from the cardinal-legate a report of his unsatisfactory negotiations with Philip, sent forth a brief by which it was declared that the king had incurred the penalty of excommunication by preventing the attendance of bishops at the late Roman council. Any ecclesiastic who might minister in his presence was likewise to be excommunicate; and the sentence was to be proclaimed throughout the kingdom.

But a month before this Philip had held a great assembly of nobles, with two archbishops and three bishops, at the Louvre, where William of Nogaret, who had succeeded Peter Flotte in the chancellorship, stood forward to charge Boniface with invasion of the holy see, with being a heretic and a simoniac, “such as no one ever was from the beginning of the world”, and with other grievous crimes. For these he required that the pope should be tried before a general council, which he maintained that the king was entitled to summon; and that in the meantime Benedict Gaetani should be kept in safe custody, while a vicar should be appointed for the performance of the papal functions.

The messengers who conveyed the excommunication of Philip into France had probably allowed the nature of their errand to become known. They were seized and imprisoned. It was in vain that the legate desired that their papers should be given up to him; and he had to bear the insult of seeing on the door of his own lodging, in the convent of St. Martin at Tours, the proclamation by which the king summoned a second meeting of the national estates for the consideration of the pope’s offences. The property of the prelates who had attended the Roman council was confiscated. The Inquisition was denounced as inhuman by the king in a letter to the bishop of Toulouse. And, with a view to win all orders to his side, Philip set forth an ordinance of March 23, reformation, offering redress of grievances to every class of his subjects, and especially to the clergy, whose support he was desirous to secure in the struggle with Rome.

On the 13th of June the second assembly of the estates-general met at the Louvre. William of Nogaret had set out for Italy two months before, but his place as accuser was taken by William of Plasian, a knight and counsellor of the parliament of Paris, with whom were associated the count of Evreux, brother of the king, and the counts of St. Pol and Dreux. Plasian professed that he was not moved by any malice against Boniface, but solely by anxiety for the church; and he brought forward twenty-nine articles of accusation, to the truth of which he swore. Of these charges some related to the alleged irregularity of Boniface’s promotion to the holy see; some, to faults of administration; some were imputations of the worst offences—heresy, unbelief, denial of the soul’s immortality, cruelty, lust of the most execrable kinds, sorcery, murder; while some were intended to exasperate the hearers by representing him as an enemy of the French nation. He was said to have declared, before his elevation, that, if he were pope, he would rather upset all Christendom and the world than refrain from destroying “the pride of France”; it was alleged that his political intrigues had been directed to this object, which he had avowed by allying himself with Albert of Germany, after having denounced him in unmeasured terms; and the king was requested, as champion of the church and defender of the faith, to procure the assembling of a general council. Philip, after professing that he would rather cover the faults of his spiritual father with his own mantle than display them, declared that he appealed against any sentence of excommunication and interdict to a general council and to a pope lawfully chosen; and he desired those who were present to join in this appeal. The bishops and abbots complied, although they expressed a hope that Boniface would be able to clear himself of the charges against him. The archbishop of Narbonne, however, distinguished himself from his brethren by bringing forward ten articles against the pope : among others, that he denied the immortality of the soul, that he had aided the king of England against France, had instigated the Saracens to invade Sicily, and had become the father of children by two of his own married nieces. It would appear that these and other charges had long been circulated in France, through the influence of cardinals, and even, in some cases, by Boniface’s own representatives. In consequence of the proceedings of the states-general, about seven hundred memorials were drawn up, all desiring a general council, but guarding their respect for the Roman see by joining with that object a lawfully-elected pope. Among the subscribers of these memorials were archbishops and bishops, nobles of all grades, the abbots of Cluny, Citeaux, Fontevraud, and Prémontré, representatives of universities, members of religious orders, and even nine cardinals. It is said, however, that among the signatures some were forged—among them, that of the abbot of Citeaux. The clergy also signed an agreement for mutual defence with the king and the barons, against whatsoever person might be disposed to attack them, and even against Boniface by name. William of Nogaret, who was already in Italy, was commissioned to present these documents to the pope, and all ecclesiastics were forbidden more strictly than before to leave the kingdom without permission.

Boniface, partly from fear of the heats of summer, partly, perhaps, from apprehension of some danger, had withdrawn from Rome to his native Anagni, where on the 15th of August he held a consistory. Passing over (as he probably was entitled to do) the personal charges against him, as unworthy of his notice, he purged himself by oath of the charge of heresy, and declared that he had provoked it only by endeavouring to heal the king’s sins. He spoke with indignation of Philip’s having received Stephen Colonna at his court. He asserted with his usual vehemence the superiority of the papacy over all earthly power, and he concluded his speech by announcing his intention of issuing a bull of deposition against Philip. Immediately after this, four bulls were despatched into France; by one of these the ecclesiastical bodies were forbidden to elect to any dignity or benefice, so long as the king should be at variance with the church; by another, the universities were suspended, during the continuance of the same circumstances, from teaching, and from conferring degrees in Divinity, canon law and civil law.

The bull of deposition was prepared. In this the pope began by declaring his authority, and setting forth his course of gentle dealing with Philip. The king had committed many offences, especially by hindering access to the apostolic see, by his proceedings as to the bishop of Pamiers, by seizing some papal envoys, by receiving the excommunicated Stephen Colonna and other members of the same family; and, as he had refused the pope’s messengers, and at last his son, the cardinal of SS. Marcellinus and Peter, there was reason to dread that the vineyard might be let out to others. The pope, therefore, declares him to be deposed, absolves his subjects from their allegiance, and forbids all communion with him. It was intended that this bull should be published at the cathedral of Anagni on Sunday the 8th of September, the Nativity of the blessed Virgin; but before that day the pope’s enemies took effectual means to prevent the execution of his design.

William of Nogaret and Sciarra Colonna, both so deeply committed against Boniface that their only hope of safety lay in his ruin, had appeared in Italy, and had taken up their abode with the king’s Florentine banker, Musciatto dei Francesi, at Stoggia, a castle belonging to him, between Florence and Siena. They were authorized to draw money from Philip’s bankers at Florence, and by means of this they were able to secure to their interest many of the petty nobles of the Campagna, who were embittered against Boniface by the aggrandizement of his family at their expense, and to enlist a force of men who either were hostile to Boniface or were ready to serve in any cause for pay. On the morning of the 7th of September this force, three hundred horsemen, with a considerable number of infantry, suddenly appeared at Anagni. The citizens, roused by the sound of the alarm-bell, assembled, and chose a nobleman of the Campagna, Adenulf, as their captain; but Adenulf, who entertained an old enmity against the pope, proved treacherous, and aided the assailants. These soon forced an entrance into the town, and beset the pope’s palace, displaying French banners, and shouting “Death to Boniface! Long live the king of France!” with the national battle-cry of “Montjoie!”. A truce of some hours was agreed on, and the pope (who had neglected all warnings of the design against him) sent to ask the leaders of the party with what terms they would be satisfied. The reply was, that he should resign his office, restore the Colonnas to their property and dignities, and should place himself in the hands of Sciarra. This proposal was necessarily refused, and on the expiration of the truce the assault was renewed. The assailants set fire to the doors of a church which adjoined the palace, and made their way through the flames. They overpowered and seized Boniface’s nephew, the marquis Gaetani; and the doors which separated them from the pope himself were one after another forced. Boniface, hearing the successive crashes, and finding himself deserted, resolved to end his life with dignity,—to “die like a pope.” Putting on the papal mantle, and the imperial “crown of Constantine,” holding his pastoral cross in one hand and the symbolical keys of St. Peter in the other, he took his seat on the throne, and with stem resolution awaited the approach of his enemies. As they entered, they were awed for a moment at the sight of the high-hearted old man, whom religion had invested with so venerable a character; but speedily angry words were exchanged. Sciarra Colonna peremptorily required the pope to resign. “Behold,” he answered, “my neck and my head! If I have been betrayed like Christ, I am ready to die like Christ’s vicar”. Sciarra dragged him from his throne; according to some accounts, he struck him on the face with his gauntleted hand, so as to draw blood; and he would probably have killed him, had not Nogaret interposed. Nogaret, it is said, called the pope a most vile heretic, and told him that he must appear before a general council—that, if he would not go voluntarily, he should be carried by force to Lyons; whereupon Boniface, reckless of the effect, exclaimed that he was no heretic, but was content to suffer at the hands of a patarine, whose father and mother had been burnt as patarines.

Boniface was put under a guard, and, after having been paraded through the town on a vicious horse, with his face towards the tail, was committed to prison, while the captors plundered the palaces and churches of Anagni of immense wealth which was contained in them. But, whether from the want of a plan or from hesitation to carry it out, they took no further steps for the disposal of the prisoner until, on the morning of the second day, the people of Anagni with some of their neighbours, under cardinal Luke Fiesco, rose on them, surprised and killed the soldiers who had the care of the pope’s person, and drove the rest of the force from the town. Boniface was brought forth into the market-place, where a multitude crowded to see him. Since his capture, he had not tasted any food—perhaps he had refused it from fear of poison. After having thanked those around him, with a profusion of tears, he entreated that some good woman would charitably save him from dying of hunger, promising absolution from all sins to any one who should bring anything for his relief. The multitude responded by a shout of “Life to you, holy father!”. Women dispersed in all directions, to return with large supplies of bread, wine, and water; and, after having recruited himself with some refreshment, the pope talked familiarly with all who chose to approach him. He pronounced a general absolution of all but the plunderers of the church; he declared himself willing to restore the Colonnas; and he announced an intention of going to Rome and summoning a general council. The Romans, alarmed by the reports which had reached them, sent some soldiers, who served as an escort, and by them he was conducted to Rome, although not without encountering an attack by the Colonna party on the way.

On reaching the city, Boniface was placed under the care of the Orsini —the hereditary enemies of the Colonnas. But his late sufferings, both of body and of mind, had told strongly on a man of eighty-six; and he appears to have fallen into a frenzy fever, which made it necessary to place him under restraint. On the 11th of October the pope was found dead in his chamber. By some writers his death is attributed to grief; by some, to poison; while others tell the story with horrible details—that he refused food, and, like a mad dog, bit his own flesh that he was found lying in bed, as if he had suffocated himself with the bed-clothes,—his staff gnawed by him in his rage, his head wounded by having been dashed against the wall, and his white hair encrusted with blood.

“He entered like a fox, reigned like a lion, and went out like a dog.” Such was a description of Boniface’s career, uttered, no doubt, after the event, but soon popularly changed into the form of a prophecy, which Celestine was supposed to have spoken when visited in his confinement at Fumone by his supplanter and persecutor. The circumstances of his death produced a general horror, which was felt even by those who abhorred the man, while they revered the office which had been so atrociously outraged in him and tales of judgments denounced by him on his enemies, and of terrible fulfillments of his curses, were eagerly circulated and believed. But the end of Boniface involved far more than his own ruin. He had attempted to strain the papal power too far, and after his failure it never recovered the ascendency which he had rashly hazarded in the endeavour to gain a yet more absolute dominion.

CHAPTER VI

PROPAGATION OF THE GOSPEL.

1

THE TARTARS

WE have seen that the Christian kingdom of which the sovereign was known in Europe as Prester John, was overthrown in 1202 by the Tartars under Genghis Khan, who reigned till 1226. Yet it is said that the conqueror added to the number of his wives a daughter of the king whom he had dethroned, and that through her favour Christianity was still in some measure kept up in north-eastern Asia, although in connexion with the Nestorians. The kingdom of Prester John, as it disappeared from the knowledge of the western Christians, became more and more a theme for fable; it was said in romances that the holy grail—the cup which the Saviour had consecrated at the last supper, and in which Joseph of Arimathea had caught the blood which flowed from His wounds on the cross—had been withdrawn to that mysterious land. And vague rumours from time to time reached Europe—some representing the ancient line of the priestly kings as still in power; others, that the sovereigns of the nation by which they had been overthrown had been converted, and were eager for the propagation of the gospel among their subjects. In some cases, the persons who spread these stories were roving impostors, who wished to practise for their private advantage on the credulity of the western Christians, and perhaps on that of the orientals in their turn; in other cases, they were really commissioned by Tartar princes, who, in their desire to gain the alliance of the West against the Mussulmans, were fain to represent themselves as more favourable to the gospel than they really were. The Mongol system of doctrine appears to have been a vague monotheism, which, while admitting only one supreme God, left room for a popular religion consisting mainly in the worship of idols and other inferior objects. This indifference to definite religion was found politically useful, as the Mongol sovereigns were thus enabled to conciliate their subjects of different creeds; and the sight of the toleration so enjoyed by Christians under the Tartar yoke was enough to convince sanguine and uncritical monkish observers that the rulers must have embraced the true faith.

The invasion of Europe by the Tartars, about the year 1240, appeared to the emperor Frederick to call for a league of all Christian nations against them, and, in a letter addressed to the princes of the West, he forcibly complained that the popes, instead of preaching a crusade against these enemies of Christianity and civilization, directed all their efforts against the emperor himself. Innocent IV, however, preferred sending three parties of Dominican and Franciscan friars as missionaries respectively to the leader of the Tartars who had invaded Europe, to any chief of the nation whom they might first meet in Asia, and to the great khan himself. The first of these parties found the invaders in Russia, but were unable to effect anything towards their conversion; nor were those who proceeded to the court of the Mongol sovereign more successful, although they were received and treated with courtesy. The other party, which was under a Dominican named Anselm or Ascelin, appears by his own report to have failed chiefly through his assumption and want of tact. On reaching the camp of a Tartar general named Baiothnoi, in Persia, Ascelin required him to submit to the pope, as the highest in dignity among Christians, and revered by all as their father and lord. “Does the pope know,” asked the Tartars, “that the khan is the son of God, and that Baiothnoi and Batho are his princes, whose names are everywhere spread abroad?”. To which Ascelin replied that the pope knew nothing of the khan or his princes, and had never heard their names, but, having been informed that a barbarous people called Tartars were everywhere committing cruelties, had sent him and his companions to them. A discussion afterwards arose as to the ceremonies which should be observed at an audience of the general, when Ascelin refused to kneel, although one of his own brethren, who had already been in Asia, assured him that such was the custom of all ambassadors, and that no religious adoration was implied in it. This contumacy brought the missionaries into danger of their lives; but at last they were dismissed with letters from the general, as extravagant, at least, in their pretensions as those of the pope himself; and after an absence of three years and seven months, they returned to Europe without having effected anything.

In 1248, Lewis IX of France, while in Cyprus, was visited by two persons who professed to be ambassadors from a general of the great khan, and reported that both the general and his master had been baptized. In consequence of this, the pious king sent envoys and missionaries, charged with valuable gifts, into Asia; but they could nowhere discover the general, and found that the khan was already dead. In 1253, the missionaries returned to Lewis, who was then in Palestine, with a report which led him to request that the pope, Innocent IV, would send Christian teachers into Asia; and among those who were sent in consequence of this was William of Ruysbroek, or Rubruquis, a Franciscan, who seems to have been a sensible and observant man, and has left an account of his travels. Rubruquis found that the reports which had been brought to the West as to the progress of Christianity among the Tartars were greatly exaggerated, and, on the other hand, that pretended missionaries from the West had endeavoured to secure their own objects by representing the pope and the sovereigns of Europe as ready to submit to the khan, if he would conform to their religion. After many hardships, he reached the camp of Mangu Khan, the grandson of Genghis, who received him and his companions well, and afterwards took them in his company to his capital, Karakorum. In many external respects, the religion of the Tartars bore so close a resemblance to the Christianity of the West as at first to impose on the missionaries. The principle of toleration was remarkably displayed at some festivals, where the ministers of Nestorian Christianity, of Mahometanism, and of Buddhist idolatry successively pronounced their benedictions, and the Tartar chiefs performed with impartial devotion the rites of each religion. The khan desired to hear the claims of the three religions argued before him; but when a disputation had been held, it was not followed by any conversions. Rubruquis found that the Nestorian clergy had great influence at court; but he reports that they were illiterate, avaricious, and drunken, and in some cases imitated the barbarians around them by marrying several wives. Christians, at confession, entreated that they might be excused in the practice of theft, on the ground that otherwise they could not live. After having spent half a year at the court of Mangu, who had repeatedly told them that it was time for them to depart, the missionaries set out on their return. At a parting audience, the khan gave Rubruquis a letter for the king of France, but would not invite him to revisit the country. “If I had had power to do wonders, as Moses did,” says the candid friar, “peradventure he had humbled himself”.

In 1256 Mangu’s general overthrew the caliphate of Bagdad, and the conquerors favoured the Nestorians whom they found there above other Christians. There were frequent overtures to the Christians of the West, with a view to a joint opposition to the Saracens in the Holy Land; and, as we have seen, some envoys from the great khan appeared at the council of Lyons in 1274, soliciting an alliance, and were baptized. But in 1303, after various fortunes, the apostasy to Islam of a khan who had been brought up as a Christian put an end to such favour as the Tartar princes had until then showed to Christians, and to the hopes of converting his people.

After the death of Mangu, the Tartars divided into two great bodies, and, while Kublai Khan gave up the West to Hulaku, he himself pushed his conquests as far as China. Kublai reigned in great splendour at Cambalu (Pekin) from 1280 to 1294. Among those who visited his court were two noble Venetians, Matthew and Nicolas Polo, who returned to Europe in 1269, with a charge to bring back to the great khan some oil from the holy sepulchre, and bearing a letter in which he requested the pope to send him a hundred learned men for the instruction of his people in Christianity. In consequence of the death of Clement IV, and the long delay in the election of a successor, it was not till 1271 that this request was very imperfectly answered by a mission of two Dominicans from Gregory X. With them were the brothers Polo, and Mark, the son of Nicolas, at that time in his seventeenth year. The party reached Cambalu in the spring of 1275, and Mark Polo, the most famous of mediaeval travellers, resided there many years. But from his narrative it would seem that Kublai, in inviting Christian missionaries, had intended rather to obtain assistance towards civilizing his people, and to improve his old religion by a mixture with the Christian system, than to adopt the gospel exclusively; and, although the khan treated the missionaries with kindness and respect, he did not (as was fondly believed in the West) himself receive baptism.

Among those who followed in the track of this mission was a Franciscan, John, who was styled after his native place, Monte Corvino, near Salerno. John laboured with zeal, judgment, and success. He converted the king of Kerait, a descendant of the family of Prester John, conferred minor orders upon him, and was assisted by him in the services of the church. It was even believed that the royal convert performed miracles after death. John of Monte Corvino proved that he was not satisfied with such achievements as the conversion of barbaric princes to a nominal Christianity, by translating the New Testament and the Psalms into the language of the country, and by instructing the younger native converts in Latin and Greek. For a time his labours were hindered by the arts of some Nestorians, who had established a patriarch of their sect at Cambalu; but he succeeded in exposing the calumnies by which these rivals had endeavoured to raise a prejudice against him, so that the khan expelled many of them from the country, while others affected for a time to embrace the orthodoxy of Rome. In 1307, John was appointed by Clement V archbishop of Cambalu, with seven suffragans under him; and he continued his labours until 1330, when he died at the age of eighty-three, and was succeeded by a Franciscan named Nicolas. During the same period many other members of the mendicant orders laboured in central and north-eastern Asia; indeed, those regions have never been so open as in that age to European visitors, and it is said that the grace of miracles, in which William of Rubruquis had lamented that he was wanting, was abundantly bestowed on his more favoured or less honest successors.

2

NESTORIANS. JACOBITES

During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, there were frequent communications between the Nestorians and Jacobites of the East and the Latin Christians, with a view to union, which their common opposition to the Mussulmans pointed out as a desirable object. But although in some cases these communications produced an approximation, or even a seeming union, they had no lasting result. The Latins, as was natural, were too ready to suppose the other parties more inclined than they really were to agree with them. Thus, they were ready to estimate any hyperbolical expressions of courtesy at far more than their real value; and on finding that the eastern sectaries stated their opinions in a manner different from the ordinary western representations of them, they were ready to believe that all heterodoxy and all differences had vanished. So, too, when the orientals allowed the pope of Rome a primacy among bishops, the Latins eagerly interpreted the words as admitting a supremacy to the fullest extent of the Roman claims. From such misunderstandings it is evident that no real reconciliation could be expected to follow.

3

ARMENIA.

The same causes which led the Nestorians to desire the alliance of the western church extended to the Armenians also. Intermarriages took place between the royal family of Armenia and those of the crusading princes or leaders. In the end of the twelfth century, Leo, king of Armenia, received a new royal title from the emperor Henry VI, and was crowned by the archbishop of Mayence, when he acknowledged the papal claims in their fullness, and promised that the catholic (or primate) of Armenia should submit to Rome. In 1239, Gregory IX sent the pall to the catholic but both before and after this time the Armenians are found corresponding with the Greek church, although without any success in the attempt at union. In 1292, under king Haithon II, the Armenian church was formally reconciled with that of Rome; but the movements which resulted in this appear to have proceeded throughout from a court party, whose acts, directed by political interests, were not supported by the general feeling of the nation.

4

LIVONIA.

During this time, the conversion of the people on the south-east of the Baltic was effected, although as much by force as by persuasion. Some merchants of Bremen had formed a settlement on the Dwina in 1158, and in 1186 Meinhard, an Augustinian canon of Segeberg, in Holstein, undertook the conversion of the Livonians, a rude and idolatrous nation, whose language he did not understand. Through the favour of Wladimir, the Russian prince to whom Livonia was subject, he was allowed to build a church at Ykeskola (Yxküll or Uexküll on the Dwina), and he soon made some converts. He also taught the people to fortify themselves against the attacks of their neighbours, and brought workmen from Gothland to aid in the labour. But he found that he had to do with a faithless race of men, who, after having professed an eager desire for his continuance among them at times when any advantage was to be gained by it, turned on him with mockery and insult when their objects had been secured, and tried to wash off their baptism in the waters of the Dwina. Dietrich, a Cistercian, who was his companion, was often in great danger. During an eclipse, his life was threatened because he was charged with having swallowed the sun. At another time, he ran the risk of being sacrificed because his fields were in better condition than those of the natives. His fate was to be decided by the ordeal of the horse, which, as we have seen, was also practised in Pomerania. The horse at first put forward the foot which would have saved the missionary’s life; but the diviners objected that the God of Christians was sitting on the animal’s back, and guiding his motions. The back was therefore rubbed, in order to get rid of this influence; but the horse again stepped as before, and Dietrich was saved. In 1170 Meinhard was consecrated as bishop by Hartwig of Bremen, who had taken no part in his original mission. His labours were approved by Celestine III, who conferred a grant of privileges on him in 1193, and he died in 1196.

The next bishop, Berthold, formerly abbot of Loccum, a Cistercian monastery on the Weser, tried with some success the effects of hospitality as a means of conversion. But after a time the Livonians turned against him, and expelled him from their country. Berthold returned with a large force of soldiers, which he had gathered by the offer of crusading privileges from Celestine III, and a victory was gained over the natives; but the bishop, having been carried into the midst of the enemy by the impetuosity of his horse, was pierced by a lance, and was torn to pieces on his fall. By a pretence of submission to baptism, the Livonians persuaded the invading army to withdraw, leaving the clergy behind; but hardly had the last ship left the shore when they threw the crucifix into the sea, again washed off their baptism in the river, and persecuted the Christians cruelly, in some cases even to death.

Albert of Apeldern, a man of sense, energy, and perseverance, succeeded Berthold as bishop. He obtained feudal rights over Livonia from Philip of Swabia, and was authorized by Innocent III to associate any monks or clergy in his labours, and to raise an army for the northern crusade, which was allowed to reckon as a fulfillment of the vow for the holy war in the East; and by means of his high connections he was able to enlist a large force. In 1199 or 1200, the crusaders founded the city of Riga, to which the bishoprick was transferred from Yxküll. In 1202, Albert established a military order, to which pope Innocent gave the statutes of the templars, and by the help of these “Brethren of the Sword”, with the crusaders whom Albert enlisted in Germany for each annual campaign, he carried on for many years the more forcible part of his mission. As another means of conveying scriptural knowledge to the Livonians, the bishop in 1204 got up a “prophetic play,” which had among its personages Gideon, David, and Herod. Heathens as well as converts were invited to the performance, and the scenes were explained by an interpreter. But when Gideon and his warriors began to fight the Midianites on the stage, the heathen spectators, supposing that some treachery was designed against them, ran off in alarm, and were not easily persuaded to return. During the following two years, most of the Livonians were baptized; but from time to time they treacherously rose in insurrection whenever the force of the settlers appeared to be weaker than usual.

Among the missionaries themselves, too, differences and jealousies broke out. The brethren of the sword quarrelled with the bishop as to the division of the conquered lands; and something like the old enmities between the templars and the patriarchs of Jerusalem was re-enacted by knights and prelates on the shores of the Baltic. In consequence of these disputes, bishop Albert, and Folcwin the second master of the order, went to Rome in 1210. The pope, according to the usual Roman policy, was more favourable to the order than to the bishop; but he refused in the following year to allow them a bishop of their own, and in 1212 he exempted Riga from all metropolitical jurisdiction, although it was not until 1246 that it was promoted to the dignity of an archbishopric, which was confirmed to it in 1255 by Alexander IV.

ESTHONIA.—LITHUANIA.

The labours of the military and of the ecclesiastical missionaries spread into Esthonia, where, at a somewhat earlier time, a bishop named Fulk, formerly a monk of La Celle, had preached. Dietrich, who has been mentioned as a companion of Meinhard in Livonia, became bishop of Esthonia; but after he had been killed, in 1218, a conflict as to jurisdiction arose between the archbishop of Lund and the bishop of Riga, as the Danes claimed a share in the conversion and its results. At length Reval was established by the pope as the seat of the Danish bishoprick, and the Germans had their see at Leal, from which it was afterwards transferred to Dorpat.

In Lithuania also the gospel made progress. Its advance was aided by the circumstance that a priest named Aldobrand was asked to arbitrate in a question of property, as those who had been robbed before their conversion felt themselves forbidden by their new religion to use violence for the recovery of what they had lost. The equity of his decision made a great impression on the heathens, who until then had known no other principle than the law of force; and for a time the clergy were overwhelmed with such business. But unhappily some laymen, who had a view only to their own interest, undertook the office of arbitration, and the popular confidence in the justice of Christians was destroyed. In one Livonian province, the people, being disposed to embrace the gospel, casts lots in order to decide whether they should join the Latin church, like their neighbours in the West, or the Greek church, like the Russians; and the result was in favour of the Latin form of Christianity.

Albert of Apeldern died in 1229. In 1236 a junction took place between the brethren of the sword and the Teutonic order, who had many points in common with them—an origin from Bremen, a constitution on the model of the templars, the patronage of the blessed Virgin, the protection of the emperors, opposition to the Danish interest, and the duty of fighting for the cross in countries which bordered on each other. The union was brought about partly through the agency of William, formerly bishop of Modena, who, after having been employed as a legate in those regions, resigned his see in 1134, and received a fresh legatine commission from Gregory IX. The countries in which the two orders were employed were thus placed under a common authority, and the union was approved by Gregory IX in 1227. The order carried on the work of subjugation, and among the effects of the manner of conversion was the establishment of serfdom, which continued until our own time.

5

PRUSSIA.

The early attempts at the conversion of the Prussians by Adalbert of Prague and Bruno have been already noticed. In the course of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, some Polish kings, after having gained victories over their neighbours of Prussia, endeavoured to impose Christianity on them, but without any substantial or lasting success. But in 1207 an attempt of a different kind was made by Godfrey, abbot of Lukna, a Cistercian monastery in Poland, who was accompanied by a monk named Philip. These missionaries converted the duke Phiolet, and his brother king Sodrech; but their labours were checked by the opposition of the Cistercian communities in the neighbourhood, who were inclined to treat them as irregular adventurers, and hence Innocent III was induced to write to the archbishop of Gnesen and to the Cistercians in 1212, desiring them to be on their guard against real “acephali,” but to show kindness and cooperation to Godfrey and his associates. He also desired the king of Poland and the duke of Pomerania to refrain from imposing servile labours on the converts, as this was found a hindrance to the gospel. In 1215 a Cistercian monk of Oliva, near Danzig, named Christian, was consecrated as bishop, and the work of conversion was then actively carried on. But the oppression of the king and the duke provoked an insurrection, in which there was a general massacre of Christians, accompanied by the destruction of some monasteries and of two hundred and fifty churches. In order to guard against the recurrence of such disasters, the duke, by the bishop’s advice, endeavoured to form a military order, and Honorius III in 1218 allowed crusaders to serve against the heathens of Prussia instead of going to the Holy Land. At the same time the pope endeavoured to forward the work of conversion by other means—such as the purchase of female children, whom the custom of the country would have doomed to death, and the institution of schools for boys. It was, however, found that the effect of the crusade lasted only so long as the soldiers remained in the country. In 1226 it was resolved to call in the aid of the Teutonic order, and terms were made with the grand master, the famous Herman of Salza. In 1230 a hundred of the knights appeared in Prussia under Herman of Balka. Gregory IX and Innocent IV invested them with the privileges of crusaders, and the emperor bestowed on them the sovereignty of such territories as they had acquired by gift, or might conquer by their swords. The knights carried on the war with steady perseverance, recruiting their numbers and gathering followers from Germany, where the northern crusade now took the place of the longer and more perilous expeditions to Palestine. They founded fortresses which afterwards grew into towns—as Elbing, Thorn, and Konigsberg—the last of these being so called in honour of king Ottocar of Bohemia, who in 1254 took part in one of their campaigns. Like other military orders, they had serious differences with the bishops and clergy, to whom pope Gregory had assigned one-third of the conquered land. They were also involved in contests with their neighbours, the dukes of Poland and Pomerania; and in 1245 William of Modena, then cardinal-bishop of Sabina, was once more sent into the north with a commission to settle these quarrels. In 1249 an agreement was made, through the legate’s mediation, by which important liberties were secured for the converts. They were to enjoy the Polish law, with the exception of its sanction of ordeals. They were not to burn their dead, or to bury men or horses with them, and were to give up all other heathenish customs. Those who had not yet been baptized were to receive baptism within a certain time, under pain of being driven out of the country with only a single garment on them. Churches were to be built and endowed. Meat and milk were forbidden on Fridays and in Lent; and confession and communion were required once at least in the year.

But the severe rule of the knights produced a dangerous insurrection in 1260,and it was not until 1283 after a warfare which, with some intervals, had lasted fifty-three years, that their sovereignty was fully established. Baptism was enforced on the Prussians as a necessary condition of liberty and in this late conversion of a barbarous Slavonic people originated a kingdom which in later days has borne a very important part in the affairs of the world.

6

RUSSIA.

During the same time when the gospel was propagated by the sword in some neighbouring countries, its progress in Russia was advanced by gentler means. The attempt to bring over the Russians to the Latin church was renewed by the legate William of Modena, but with no better success than before. Russia suffered very severely from the great Mongol invasion. It is said that the barbarians, on reaching Kiev, were struck with astonishment by the beauty of the holy city, and offered to spare it if the inhabitants would submit to them. But the Russians were resolved to hold out, and fortified the cathedral and other churches, which were taken one by one after a long and obstinate resistance. The buildings were destroyed, their treasures plundered, the monks and clergy were slaughtered or driven to flight. It is supposed that the metropolitan, a Greek named Joseph, perished in the siege; and after the office had been ten years vacant, Innocent IV, thinking to take advantage of the Russian church’s distress, and of the removal of the Byzantine patriarch to Nicaea, sent ambassadors into Russia, with the offer of kingly crowns and titles for the princes, and with proposals for union with the Latin church. The prince of Novogorod, Alexander Newsky, one of the royal saints and heroes of Russia, refused to treat with the ambassadors; but David, prince of Galicia, took advantage of the proposals by accepting the crown and the royal title, while he deferred the question of reconciliation with Rome until a general council should meet. Finding, however, that his application for a crusade against the Tartars did not meet with immediate attention from Alexander IV, David broke off all communication with Rome, and he soon after obtained consecration for a metropolitan named Cyril from the patriarch at Nicaea.

Cyril (the second patriarch of that name) held his dignity for thirty years, and laboured indefatigably for the restoration of the Russian church. After his death, in 1280, another vacancy of two years occurred, in consequence of the unwillingness of the Russians to connect themselves with the Latinizing patriarch Veccus, who then occupied the see of Constantinople. The next metropolitan, a Greek named Maximus, removed his see from Kiev to Vladimir in 1299; and in the earlier part of the following century, it was again transferred to Moscow, which has since continued to be the seat of the primate of Russia.

7

JEWS AND MAHOMETANS. RAYMOND LULL.

While the conversion of rude pagan nations employed the energies of zealous missionaries, attempts were also made to bring over converts from Judaism and Mahometanism, and many controversial treatises were written for this purpose. In each case there was the difficulty that the champions of the rival religion possessed an elaborate learning of their own, which had too little in common with Christian learning to be assailable on principles which both parties would have consented to knowledge. The most famous treatise produced in this time against the Jews and Mahometans is the ‘Pugio Fidei’ of Raymond Martini, a Spanish Dominican, which even in our own day is consulted as a storehouse of rabbinical learning.

The preaching of St. Francis and his followers in Egypt and Morocco has been already noticed. The characters of literary controversialist and of missionary preacher were united in Raymond Lull, who was born in the island of Majorca about 1235. In his early years he frequented the court of his sovereign, James of Aragon; and his life was free and licentious until a change was suddenly produced in him by some circumstance of which various accounts are given. For a time Raymond meditated anxiously on the best way of devoting himself to the service of Christ; but it would seem that his zeal had begun to cool, when a sermon which he heard on the festival of St. Francis made him resolve to give up all. He sold his property, except so much as was enough for the maintenance of his wife and children, and resolved to employ himself in the conversion of the Mussulmans, both by written argument and by preaching. With a view to this, he bought a Saracen slave, from whom he learnt Arabic; and we are told that his knowledge of languages was increased by supernatural gift. He withdrew for some months into a solitude, and there, it is said, received by revelation his “art of arts” or “general art”—a method which would seem to have promised the acquisition of universal knowledge without the ordinary labour of study. Through Raymond's influence, king James was persuaded to establish in Majorca a monastery where thirteen Franciscans were to be trained for the work of preaching to the Mussulmans in their own language; but his attempts to procure from Honorius IV and other popes a decree that such study should be general in monasteries were unsuccessful.

In the winter of 1291-2, Raymond crossed the sea to Tunis, for the work to which he had devoted himself, taking with him an Arabic translation of his “Great Art,” which he had executed at Genoa. He invited the Mussulman teachers to dispute with him; but his daring endangered his life, and he was put on board a ship bound for Naples, with threats of death if he should ever return to Africa. For some years after this, he wandered about Italy and France, teaching his new art (although it was forbidden at Rome) and endeavouring to stir up popes, kings, and other persons of power and influence, to the general establishment of monastic schools for the study of eastern languages. Raymond also made his way to Cyprus, and even to Armenia, everywhere disputing with such opponents of the orthodox faith as he met—Mussulmans, Jacobites, and Nestorians. In 1306 or the following year, he made a second expedition to Africa, where he attempted to preach at Bougiah, and to confute the Mahometan doctors in disputation; but he was imprisoned and sentenced to death. This punishment, however, was commuted for expulsion from the country, but in his return to Europe he was shipwrecked on the Tuscan coast.

The hopes which Raymond had conceived for his project of oriental schools from the election of Celestine V were disappointed by Boniface, who regarded such objects with indifference. But at the council of Vienne, in 1311, he obtained from Clement V the concession that such schools should be established in the place of the papal residence, wherever it might be, and in the universities of Paris, Oxford, Bologna, and Salamanca. The professors were not only to teach Hebrew, Chaldee, and Arabic, but were to translate books from those tongues into Latin.

In 1314, Raymond (who throughout his life remained a layman) separated from his wife, became a tertiary of the Franciscan order, and sailed once more for Africa, with the resolution of enduring martyrdom. Again he reached Bougiah, and his preaching was heard with attention, until he declared the circumstances of his former visit and banishment, and threatened his hearers with the vengeance of heaven unless they would forsake their misbelief. On this a furious tumult arose; stones were thrown at the old man, he was dragged out of the town, and, although he was able to reach a Genoese vessel, the injuries which he had received were so serious that he died when in sight of his native island.

CHAPTER VII

SECTARIES.

1

THE INQUISITION

THE persecutions which were continually carried on against the Albigenses, Waldenses, and others, were not followed by the conversion which was desired and expected, but appeared rather to strengthen in the sectaries their dislike of the ecclesiastical doctrine and system. Thus, the Waldenses, who at their outset had varied so little from the church that they might probably have been reconciled to it by moderate treatment, ran into new developments which had been foreign to the thoughts of the founders. Everywhere we find the heretical parties spreading—the old sects gaining converts, and new sects arising, although the variety of names under which they were known considerably exceeds the varieties of opinion which existed among them. We read of cathari, not only in southern France and in Lombardy, but at Rimini, Florence, and Viterbo, at Rome itself, and at Naples, in Sicily, Spain, Germany, Flanders and various parts of northern and eastern France and those who were discovered were burnt or otherwise severely dealt with. Frederick II taunted the popes with allowing all sorts of heresy among their Milanese allies; and, in consequence of their political connection with Rome, the authorities of Milan found it necessary to vindicate their character for orthodoxy. “The Milanese,” says a chronicler, under the date of 1233, “began to burn heretics in the third year of the lord archbishop William of Ruzolo”; and in 1233 a podestà of Milan recorded, in a verse which may still be read on a public palace of that city, the fact that he had not only erected the building, but, “as he ought,” had burnt the cathari.

Such a view of duty, the clergy—who in the preceding century had themselves been usually opposed to the execution of heretics, but had now changed their system—zealously tried to impress on the laity, in order that persons convicted of heresy might be dealt with by the “secular arm.” The principle of persecution for religious error was very decidedly laid down, and was justified by argument from the punishment of other offences. “He that taketh away the faith,” says Innocent III, “stealeth the life; for the just shall live by faith.” So, the great theologian of the Dominican order argues that, if false coiners be punished with death, much more is such a doom deserved by heretics, forasmuch as a corruption of faith, whereby the soul has its life, is far worse than a falsification of money; and as to this he distinguishes the case of heretics and apostates from that of Jews or others who have never been members of the church, and therefore are not to be forcibly brought into it. In like manner another eminent Dominican, Humbert de Romanis, inculcates the duty of punishing heretics, and declares that “even if the pope were a heretic”, (a supposition which in that age was not supposed to be impossible) “he should be punished”. The especial manner of death for heresy was supposed to be indicated by the Saviour’s declaration that those who abide not in Him are cast into the fire, as withered branches, “and they are burned.”

Even Frederick II, as we have seen, felt himself obliged to do something for his own reputation by publishing severe edicts against sectaries; and these laws were gladly accepted by the popes, and at a later time were renewed by Rudolf of Hapsburg. In France, St. Lewis, and in Hungary, king Ladislaus, seconded the wishes of the popes by allowing their orders for the extirpation of heresy to be carried out. The inquisition, which had been established in Languedoc by the council of Toulouse, in 1229, was, with the consent of the pious king, committed to the Dominicans and Franciscans throughout France. In 1232, the Inquisition was introduced into Aragon, and in 1248 it was fully established throughout Christian Spain.

Frederick’s persecuting laws were intended rather for Italy and Sicily than for his northern dominions. But in 1232 a priest named Conrad of Marburg—a man of coarse and uncultivated mind, but of much power as a preacher—appeared under papal sanction as inquisitor in Germany. By some, he is described as a Dominican; by others, as a Franciscan; but in truth it would seem that no monastic order can claim the credit or the infamy of reckoning him among its members. His cruelty had been execrably displayed in the sway which he exercised over the saintly Elizabeth, daughter of the king of Hungary, and widow of Lewis, landgrave of Thuringia, who had died at Brindisi on his way to the crusade. The devout and submissive character of her mind provoked Conrad to indulge in outrageous excesses of tyranny. Having secured her compliance by a vow of obedience, he persuaded her, under the name of religion, to renounce her children and relations, and to withdraw into a hospital where she devoted herself to the practice of ascetic exercises and of ministering to the most loathsome forms of disease. He cut off from her the society of all whom she had known or loved—even of her nurse; he compelled her to live as a servant among her servants; he even carried his prohibition of all that could gratify her so far as to forbid an indulgence in almsgiving; he would allow her no other companion than some “austere” women, who treated her tyrannically, and told tales against her; whereupon he flogged her, and gave her blows on the face, “which, however,” says a biographer, “she had wished and longed to bear, in remembrance of the Lord’s bufferings”. Under this system the princess died in 1231, before she had completed her twenty-fourth year; and the savage bigotry and cruelty which Conrad had shown as a spiritual director found an ampler field for their exercise in his new character of inquisitor. Beginning with the lowest classes, he gradually included persons of better station in his inquiries, until at length counts and marquises were marked out as victims; and a chronicler tells us that a king or a bishop was of no greater account with him than a poor layman. Those who were accused were required to choose between two courses: they were either to confess and be burnt (or, at least, to be shorn and shut up for life), or they were to be burnt for denial of the charges against them, although with the consolation of being assured by the inquisitor that any who might be put to death innocently would be rewarded with the bliss and glory of martyrs. To speak in mitigation of the sentence, was to become a partner of heresy, and liable to the same punishment as the accused. The proceedings of the inquisitor’s court were very summary: the accusation, the sentence, and the execution of it were often the work of a single day. Many in despair confessed offences of which they were guiltless, while others endured death rather than disavow their innocence. False accusations of heresy were prompted by private revenge, or by quarrels as to property, and soon became common. All along the Rhine, the proceedings of Conrad spread terror, and aroused general execration. The archbishops of Mayence, Treves, and Cologne assembled diets to consider the matter, and, in accordance with the decision of these assemblies, reported his proceedings to Gregory IX; and even Gregory expressed regret that he had intrusted the inquisitor with so much power, and astonishment that the Germans had endured so long. But before an act of deprivation could be prepared, Conrad, while on a journey, was waylaid, and fell a victim to the vengeance which his tyranny had provoked. Gregory, although he eulogized the murdered inquisitor, did not exact severe punishment from those who had shared in his death. And it is perhaps to the indignation excited by Conrad that Germany owed its exemption from a permanent inquisition.

In other cases, also, the severity of inquisitors was avenged by lawless means. Thus, three Dominican inquisitors were murdered at Avignonnet, in Languedoc, in 1239; and a more celebrated instance of this kind is the assassination of the Dominican Peter of Verona, which has furnished a theme for the genius of Titian and of Guido.

Among the causes of difference which arose between Philip the Fair and the papacy, one was connected with the proceedings of the Dominican inquisitors of Toulouse, who were said to imprison persons of all classes under frivolous pretexts, and to release those who submitted to bribe them. In consequence of these reports, one of the king’s officers inquired into the matter, and set at liberty many persons, whom the inquisitors had committed to prison. For this invasion of the church’s privileges, he was excommunicated at Paris and elsewhere. He appealed to the pope against this sentence; but before any judgment could be obtained, he died at Perugia, during the vacancy which followed after the death of Benedict XI.

It is said that some of the sectaries endeavoured to protect themselves against the questions of inquisitors by a remarkable system of equivocation. Thus we are told that at Treves, and at Montvimer (their head-quarters in northern France), the cathari had a pope and a bishop corresponding in names to the reigning pope of Rome and to the bishop of the diocese; while certain old women of the sect were spoken of as St. Mary, the Church, Baptism, the Eucharist, Marriage, and the like; so that the sectaries, when asked whether they acknowledged pope Gregory or the blessed Virgin, holy Church or the sacrament of marriage, might reply in the affirmative, with a mental reference to the persons who were designated by these names in their own communion.

The crusades had had the effect of making the cathari of the West and those of the East mutually known, and of bringing them into intercourse and correspondence with each other. In consequence of the intercourse thus established, the doctrine of the bogomiles made its way into the West, and with some of the cathari of North Italy superseded the system of pure dualism, which was still retained in the south of France.

The general use of the Scriptures, and the translation of them into the vernacular languages, had been discouraged by Gregory VII, and the circumstance that the Waldensian and other sectaries professed to ground their opposition to Rome on a free and unprejudiced study of Scripture, tended to make the authorities of the church more unwilling to allow such study. We have already seen how the Waldensians of Metz were dealt with by Innocent III, who interprets the command “If a beast touch the mountain, it shall be stoned”, as meant to discourage presumptuous study of Scripture by persons who were not duly qualified as to ability or knowledge. But the council of Toulouse in 1229 went further, by forbidding lay persons to have the books of the Old or New Testament, “unless perchance one may of devotion wish to nave a Psalter or a Breviary for Divine offices, or the Hours of the blessed Mary’’; and even these it was “most strictly forbidden” to have in the vulgar tongue. So a council at Tarragona in 1234 prohibits the Scriptures “in the Romance tongue,” and orders such translations to be burnt ; and a council at Beziers in 1246 forbade laymen to have any theological books, even in Latin, while clergy and laity were alike forbidden to have them in the vernacular. The popular knowledge of Scripture history, of which the sources were thus interdicted, was now derived from the compendium of Peter Comestor.

2

THE STEDINGERS.

In the middle of the century, a whole people was destined to furnish an instance of the readiness with which charges of heresy were brought against persons who had offended their accusers in some other way. The Stedingers, a simple and hardy tribe of Frisian origin, occupied a country to the east of the Weser in its lower part, and appear to have acknowledged the counts of Oldenburg as their liege-lords, but were immediately subject to the archbishops of Bremen, with whose officials, from about the year 1187, they were embroiled about questions of ecclesiastical dues. They would seem, also, to have complained of the insolence and immorality of their priests, and thus their differences with the clergy came to be misrepresented as originating in heresy. Strange fables—partly new, and partly borrowed from the traditional charges against Manichaean and other sectaries—were circulated. It was said that the Stedingers had relapsed into heathenism and that they practised magic; that in their initiation they kissed the hinder parts of a toad, and allowed the reptile to spit into their mouths; that a man, tall, fleshless, and of ghastly paleness, with piercing dark eyes, appeared among them; and that in the moment when they kissed him, and felt the icy chill of his touch, all remembrance of the catholic faith vanished from their minds. To these charges were added the old tales of obscene reverence to a black cat, darkened rooms, and licentious orgies.

In 1232, Gregory IX wrote to king Henry, the son of the emperor Frederick, to the bishop of Minden and other prelates of the neighbourhood, and to the inquisitor Conrad of Marburg, stating these and other abominations which were imputed to the Stedingers, and urging that they should be punished. A crusade against them was proclaimed, and a large army, under the duke of Brabant and the counts of Holland and Cleves, overwhelmed the unfortunate people, of whom, in a second campaign, 6000—men, women, and children—are said to have been slain. After this calamity, even the pope appears to have found reason to doubt the truth of the information on the strength of which the Stedingers had been butchered as enemies to the faith; and he issued a decree which gave the strongest possible condemnation to his late policy, by omitting all mention of heresy among the charges against them, and by authorizing their absolution on condition that they should promise to give no offence in time to come.

3

BEGHARDS AND BEGUINES.

Among the sectaries of this age the names of Beghards and Beguines often occur, while the same terms are also used to designate persons whose orthodoxy was unimpeachable according to the standard of the time. The derivation of the words has been much questioned. Some refer it to the old Saxon beggen or begheren, which means either to beg or to pray, but must here be understood in the second of these senses, as mendicancy was no part of the system. Others trace it to the epithet bègue (or stammerer), attached to the name of one Lambert, a priest of Liége, who, about 1180, founded a society of beguines there. A third etymology is from the name of Begga, duchess of Brabant, and mother of Pipin of Heristal; but this, although it has in later times naturally found favour with the Flemish beguines, is quite without foundations

The beguines seem to have been originally women who lived in a society which had somewhat of a monastic character, although without vows or any special rule—retaining the liberty to marry, and being allowed to enjoy such property as they might possess, while they earned money by weaving or similar works, and gave all that they could spare to the poor, the sick, and the strangers, for whom in some cases they provided hospitals. It has been supposed that these communities originated in the excess of the female sex which resulted from the vast consumption of men in the crusades; but the system was soon taken up by men, who were styled beghards; and from Liege the institution speedily made its way into other parts. Matthew Paris says that about 1243 there were 2000 beghards and beguines in and about Cologne—the women being more numerous than the men; and about the same time a man who has already been mentioned as having passed himself off for a catharist in various countries, speaks of beguini as a kind of “new religious,” whom he saw at Neustadt, in Austria. The female societies were under the government of “mistresses”, of whom in the larger houses there were two or more; and the beghards had in like manner their heads, who were sometimes called masters, but more commonly ministers (or servants). The names of beghards and beguines came not unnaturally to be used for devotees who, without being members of any regular monastic society, made a profession of religious strictness; and thus the application of the names to some kinds of sectaries was easy—more especially as many of these found it convenient to assume the outward appearance of beghards, in the hope of disguising their differences from the church. But on the other hand, this drew on the orthodox beghards frequent persecutions, and many of them, for the sake of safety, were glad to connect themselves as tertiaries with the great mendicant orders. And between the orthodox and the sectaries who were confounded under these common names, they served also to designate persons whose opinions might perhaps be tinged with unconscious sectarianism, but who were chiefly noticeable for eccentricity in dress and manners, or for a religious zeal too little accompanied by knowledge or discretion. In the fourteenth century the popes dealt hardly with the beghards; yet orthodox societies under this name still remained in Germany; and in Belgium, the country of their origin, sisterhoods of beguines flourish to the present day.

4

SECT OF THE FREE SPIRIT.

Among those who were confounded with the beghards—partly because, like them, they abounded along the Rhine—were the brethren and sisters of the Free Spirit. These appear in various places under various names, and in many points the system attributed to them reminds us of other sects, such as the followers of Amalric of Bena, although it is very doubtful whether they were directly connected with any of these. Their doctrines and their practical system were of a highly enthusiastic kind. They wore a peculiarly simple dress, professed to give themselves to contemplation, and, holding that labour is a hindrance to contemplation and to the elevation of the soul to God, they lived by beggary. Their doctrines were mystical and almost pantheistic—that all things come from God, and will be absorbed into Him; that the soul is part of the Godhead, and may by contemplation become united with it in such wise that a man shall be Son of God in the same sense as the Saviour was; that when this perfection is attained, he is freed from all carnal appetites, and rises above all laws, as being independent of them, so that he may look down on prayers, sacraments, and other rites as elements fit only for children. These principles naturally led to fanaticism in practice. The brethren and sisters are said to have slept together; for modesty and shame were regarded as proofs that the soul had not yet overcome its evil desires; and the statement may be believed, as the enemies of the sect allow that breaches of chastity were rare among them, and account for this by supposing that the devil produced in the sectaries a coldness which rendered them insensible to the temptations of the senses.

The brethren and sisters of the Free Spirit were much persecuted, and probably formed a large proportion of those who were burnt under the name of beghards. To this sect also perhaps belonged a woman of the name of Wilhelmina, who was revered at Milan as a saint for twenty years after her death in 1251, until an inquiry into her merits resulted in the demolition of her gorgeous tomb, and the burning of her bones as those of a heretic.

5

THE “APOSTLES”.

The idea of evangelical poverty, which had given rise to the two great mendicant orders, was widely spread in this age, and influenced most of the new sects in a greater or less degree. Among the most remarkable of these was the party which claimed the title of Apostles, founded by Gerard Segarello, of Parma, a layman of humble birth, weak understanding, and scanty education, about the year 1249. Segarello attempted to gain admission into a society of Franciscans, as being the order nearest to his ideas of apostolical poverty, and, having been refused, continued to hang about the convent, until a picture of the apostles in the cloister gave him the idea of adopting the dress in which they were represented—with long hair and beard, a long white coat of coarse cloth, and a rope by way of girdle—and of establishing a new brotherhoods He sold his property, threw away the price in the market-place, and is said to have gone through a strange imitation of the Saviour’s early life—submitting to circumcision, lying swathed in a cradle, and receiving nourishment like an infant. In 1260, the year on which abbot Joachim had fixed for the beginning of the last age of the church, and in which the frenzy of the flagellants broke out, Segarello became more conspicuous by gathering about thirty disciples round him; and strange stories are told of the insane fanaticism which he displayed. For nearly twenty years the party was allowed to spread without being molested; but in 1279, two of Segarello’s female adherents were burnt at Parma as catharists; whereupon the people plundered the convent of the Dominican inquisitors, killed some of the friars, and banished the rest. The bishop, Obizzo Sanvitale, although no friend to the inquisitors, arrested Segarello, but after a time, being convinced that he was a simple and harmless man, kept him as a sort of domestic jester, until in 1286 he felt himself bound to dismiss and to banish him, in consequence of a decree by which Honorius IV, grounding his act on a canon of the second council of Lyons against any new religious orders but such as were approved by the holy see, prohibited the peculiarities of the apostolicals as to dress and other matters, and ordered that no one should bestow alms on them, or otherwise encourage them. Notwithstanding a repetition of this decree by Nicolas IV in 1290, Segarello ventured to return to Parma, but in the year of jubilee, 1300, the Dominicans, who had been received back with honour, brought him to trial, and, although July 18, he recanted the errors which were imputed to him, he was made over to the secular arm, and burnt as a relapsed heretic.

In the meantime the sect had acquired a member who by abilities and education was better fitted for the office of leader, which, indeed, Segarello had always declined. Dolcino was the son of a priest in the diocese of Novara, and was educated at Vercelli, where he is described as having been quick and diligent in study, and generally popular, until he was obliged to withdraw in consequence of having robbed a priest who had been his tutor. His next appearance was in the Tyrol, where he addressed himself with powerful and effective eloquence to the spirit which had prevailed in that region from the days of Arnold of Brescia, denouncing the luxury of the clergy, and recommending a community of goods, and even, it is said, of women. But he was dislodged by the bishop of Trent, and was expelled from Milan, Como, and other cities of Lombardy. On the death of Segarello, Dolcino assumed the post of chief of the sect, and brought into prominence its opposition to the Roman church. He sent forth three letters, in the first of which he describes as his enemies all the secular clergy, many of the great and powerful, and the whole of the religious orders, especially the preachers and the minorites. Before these he intimates his intention of retiring, until in due time he should reappear for their destruction; and it has been supposed that he resided for a time in Dalmatia, and thence issued his later epistles.

The apostolicals professed that they agreed with the church in doctrine and desired nothing more than a thorough reform of its corruptions—a restoration of the primitive simplicity and poverty. They affected an air of mystery in imparting the peculiarities of the party to converts. The doctrine of Dolcino was founded on that of Joachim, although greatly varying from it. He taught that there were four states of the church, each rising above that which had gone before it, and each declining before the following state came in as a remedy. First, the state of patriarchs, prophets, and righteous men—when it was right that mankind should multiply. Next, the state under Christ and His apostles, in which virginity was to be preferred to marriage, and poverty to wealth. Then, the age from Constantine and Sylvester, which was subdivided by the appearance of St. Benedict, and again by that of St. Dominic and St. Francis; and lastly, the age which began with Gerard of Parma, and was to continue and fructify until the day of judgment. The difference between the older mendicant orders and the apostolicals was declared to be, that, whereas the former had houses to which they might carry the spoils of their begging, the newer and more perfect party had no houses, and were not allowed to carry away what was given to them. The church of Rome was identified with the apocalyptic harlot, and was said to have lost all spiritual power through the vices of her rulers; all popes since Sylvester had been deceivers, with the exception of Celestine V; their excommunications were naught, nor could any pope really absolve unless he were utterly poor, and equal in holiness to St. Peter. The religious orders were declared to be mischievous; for it was better to live without than under a vow, and the apostolicals were not constrained by any outward rule, but by the free spirit of love. They claimed an understanding of the Scriptures which was not derived from man, and held that except by joining their body, of which every member was perfect as the apostles, there could be no salvation. Although oaths were forbidden in general, it was held to be lawful to save their lives even by forswearing their opinions; and this Dolcino acknowledged that he had thrice done when he fell into the hands of inquisitors; but if death were inevitable, it was their duty to avow their doctrines boldly.

Dolcino announced that Frederick of Sicily, on whom the antipapalists were fond of resting their hopes, was to enter Rome on Christmas-day 1305, was to be chosen as emperor, and to set up ten kings who were to reign three years and a half—evidently the ten horns of the apocalyptic beast, which was thus turned to the antipapal interest. The emperor was to slay pope Boniface with his cardinals, the prelates, clergy, monks, and friars, and was to restore the church to its apostolical poverty. After the destruction of Boniface, a new pope, specially sanctified by the Holy Spirit, and equal in perfection to St. Peter, was to be appointed by supernatural means (for there would be no cardinals to elect). Perhaps this pope might prove to be Dolcino himself, if then alive; perhaps Segarello restored to life. After preaching three years and a half, the holy pope and his associates were to be caught up to paradise, while Enoch and Elias were to descend, to preach of antichrist, and to be slain by him; and when the time of antichrist should have passed away, the pope and his followers were to return, and to convert all men to the true faith, with a marvellous effusion of the Holy Ghost. The seven angels of the apocalyptic churches were interpreted to mean respectively Benedict, Sylvester, Francis, Dominic, Gerard Segarello, Dolcino himself, and the future holy pope. If at any time the course of events did not agree with Dolcino’s predictions, he was ready to alter these, or in some other manner to get over the difficulty.

The apostolicals are described by a contemporary as spending their time in idleness, neither working nor praying. They kissed the feet of Dolcino, as being the holiest of men, while the orthodox shuddered at his profanity in eating flesh during Lent and on fast days. The sectaries regarded marriage as purely spiritual. The men led about sisters, and with these they renewed the fanatical trials which have been mentioned in connexion with other parties. Dolcino’s companion was a beautiful maiden of Trent, named Margaret, whom he extolled as perfect. After a time, it was rumoured (apparently without ground) that she was pregnant. “If so” said Dolcino, “it must be of the Holy Ghost.”

In 1304, Dolcino, at the invitation of a wealthy landowner, established himself in the Val Sesia, and disciples gathered rapidly around him from both sides of the Alps. The clergy were alarmed, and an army of crusaders took the field against the apostolicals, under the command of Rainier, bishop of Vercelli, and under the patronage of the great local saint, Eusebius. Although the principles of the sect forbade the use of force, even in self-defence, Dolcino now displayed an instinctive genius for war; he disappeared by night from the Val Sesia, and, with more than fourteen hundred companions, took up a strong position on the impregnable “Mountain of the Bare Wall,” near Varallo. But after they had here defied their enemies for a time, the dread of famine began to be felt. They were compelled to eat horses, dogs, rats, and even the flesh of their own dead companions. In Lent they endeavoured to support themselves on roots, leaves, and hay. In their desperation they made sallies into the neighbouring country, plundered and profaned churches, burnt, ravaged, carried off captives, whom they put to heavy ransom, and reduced many of the peaceable inhabitants to beggary. Leaving their sick and infirm behind them, about 1000 of the sectaries made their way through fearful difficulties, over mountains covered with deep snow and ice, to the still wilder March 10, height of Mount Zebello, near Ivrea, where they fortified themselves in their new position, and dug a deep well. But here many of them fell victims to cold, and the distress of the survivors became more terrible than ever; for their money, of which they had accumulated a large store by plunder, was unable to procure them any provisions. A holy war was proclaimed against them by Clement V, and many enlisted under bishop Rainier for the enterprise. Yet in this dreadful extremity of hunger the sectaries kept up the sternness of their resolution, until, after having held out somewhat more than a year on the mountain, and after successes which they abused by cruelty and plunder, their strength was utterly exhausted. On Maundy Thursday 1307, after a fierce and desperate resistance, they were overpowered and almost exterminated by the crusading force. Dolcino, Margaret, and one of the leaders named Longino, were reserved for a more terrible death. They were tried before a mixed tribunal of clergy and lawyers, and pope Clement, on being consulted, answered that they should be punished in the same places which had witnessed their misdeeds. Dolcino and his “sister,” therefore, suffered at Vercelli. It is said that, when Margaret was led out for punishment, her beauty so captivated the beholders that many nobles offered her marriage if she would consent to save her life by renouncing her errors; but she persevered, and without flinching endured the torture of a slow fire, while Dolcino was compelled to look on, and calmly exhorted her to endurance. Dolcino himself bore with equal constancy the tearing of his flesh with red-hot pincers, and Longino suffered death with the same circumstances of atrocious cruelty at Biella. Thus the sect of the apostolicals was extinguished in blood, and, although slight traces of it may be discovered somewhat later, its name and even its influence speedily disappear.

CHAPTER VIII.

SUPPLEMENTARY.

I.

The Hierarchy.

(1). Innocent III declared that to St. Peter had been committed the government, not only of the whole church, but of the whole world. He set forth more strongly Gregory VII’s comparison of the spiritual and the secular powers to the sun and moon respectively. As the moon, he said, borrows from the sun a light which is inferior both in amount and in quality, in position and in effect, so does the regal power borrow from the pontifical; as the light which rules over the day—i.e. over spiritual things—is the greater, and as that which rules over the night—i.e. over carnal things— is the lesser, so is the difference between pontiffs and kings like that between the sun and the moon. Throughout the century which began with Innocent’s pontificate, the great pope’s principles were triumphant. As the imperial dignity, according to him, had been transferred from the Greeks to the west by papal authority, and for the benefit of the papal see, so the popes claimed the right to dispose of kingdoms and of the empire, and enforced the claim, although not with unvarying success; whenever, indeed, they saw a likelihood of vigorous resistance, they were careful to put such an interpretation on their pretensions as might enable them to recede without loss of dignity. They steadily pursued the policy of exacting large concessions for the church, and especially for their own see, from those whom they supported as candidates for the empire, from Otho IV to Albert of Austria. And thus Rudolf of Hapsburg, in addition to the substantial concessions which have been mentioned elsewhere, admitted the comparison of the greater and lesser lights, and also that use of the word beneficia, which had excited the indignation of Frederick Barbarossa. The papal inferences from Constantine’s pretended donation became more extravagant than before. Thus, Gregory IX laid it down that the first Christian emperor had made over to the popes, not only Rome and the ensigns of imperial dignity, but the empire itself; and that the empire of the Germans in later times was held only by delegation from the Roman see. And Innocent IV, in pronouncing the deposition of Frederick II, went still further by declaring that Christ bestowed on St. Peter and his successors not only pontifical but regal power, earthly as well as heavenly and spiritual government; and therefore that Constantine did nothing more than give up to the church a part of that which had before rightfully belonged to it. With a view to controversy with the Greek church, spurious sentences were brought forward as citations from Greek fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries, in order to claim their authority for the late developments of the papal pretensions. The feudal principles were so applied as to constitute the pope a lord paramount, not only over the hierarchy, but over states and kingdoms; and this pretension was embodied in the display which Boniface VIII is said to have made at the Roman jubilee. From having styled themselves vicars of St. Peter, the popes now styled themselves vicars of Christ or of God, and their persons were surrounded with a pomp before unknown.

The popes now not only claimed the right of summoning general councils, but aimed at superseding the voice of councils by their own authority—allowing even to councils which were styled general a power of advising only, and not of deciding by vote. Thus it was in the Lateran council of 1215, and in great measure in the first council of Lyons, in 1245. And now the papal pretension to infallibility was for the first time plainly asserted by the great Dominican doctor, Thomas Aquinas.

But on the other hand the increased pretensions of the papacy began to awaken inquiry into the sources of the papal power. Even where the genuineness of Constantine’s donation was unquestioned, it was denied by jurists that the emperor was competent to grant such a donation; and the papal inferences were met by a story that, when the gift had been made to pope Sylvester, a voice was heard in the air, exclaiming, “This day is poison poured forth into the church.”  And such practical facts as the Pragmatic Sanction of St. Lewis, the ecclesiastical policy of Edward I of England, and the conflict between Boniface and Philip the Fair, were serious warnings to the papacy that its pretensions were not to pass undisputed.

In their great contest with the empire, the popes asserted the principle of free election to bishoprics and abbacies; but, when they had succeeded in excluding the secular power, they endeavoured to usurp the patronage of such appointments for themselves. Thus we find that, in five out of seven vacancies which took place in the see of Canterbury during the century, the popes, under one pretext or another, set aside the claimants who had been elected, and, either by their assumed “plenitude of power” or otherwise, filled the English primacy with their own nominees. Yet this attempt was not as yet successful except in particular cases—as when it was said that the electors had forfeited their privilege by choosing badly, and that therefore the appointment fell to the pope “by right of devolution”, or when the vacancy was caused by the death of a prelate on a visit to the papal court,—a case which occurred the more frequently, on account of the dangerous climate of Rome.

The same policy of grasping at patronage was practised as to other classes of preferment. Boniface VIII extended to benefices of all kinds the claims arising from the death of an incumbent at the Roman court. The system of precistae, was carried further than before, and the prayers were changed into commands. Innocent III was not content to send foreign ecclesiastics into England, with requests that the bishops would provide for them, but took it on himself to make out instruments of collation, without giving any other notice to the bishops whose patronage he thus usurped. Honorius addressed letters to the clergy of France and England, stating that the exactions of the Roman court, which were a common subject of complaint, were caused by the scantiness of its income from other sources; and proposing by way of remedy that the income of certain prebends in every cathedral and collegiate or monastic church should be set apart for the expenses of the curia. But in both countries the proposal was received with such an outburst of indignant derision that the legates who were charged with it refrained from pressing the matter. Innocent IV at the first council of Lyons renewed the attempt to get possession of English prebends; but the representatives of the English church were firm in their refusal. The system of precistae, however, went on. Thus Gregory IX, in 1240, desired archbishop Edmund and two other English bishops to provide for three hundred Italians; and although the intrusion of foreign incumbents into the English church was among the chief causes of the “Barons’ War,” the legate, Guy Fulcodi, who was sent to England in the heat of that great contest, was authorized by Urban IV to bestow canonries and other benefices by way of provision. The documents by which patronage was thus usurped were from the time of Innocent IV rendered more peremptory by the introduction of the phrases “de plenitudine potestatis” and “non obstantibus” by which it was signified that the pope had absolute power in such matters, and that his will was paramount to all difficulties or objections.

The papal legates continued to excite the indignation of those to whom they were sent by their extortions and assumptions. Clement IV describes them as having a power like that of proconsuls over the provinces committed to them, and they exercised jurisdiction and invaded patronage with all the authority which the popes themselves assumed. In some cases, sovereigns refused to admit such visitors into their dominions, and popes were reduced to the evasion of sending envoys without the title of legate, although with all or more than all the legatine power. But it was part of the oath exacted from Otho IV and his successors, that they would not throw any hindrance in the way of legates; and, if a pope agreed to refrain from sending legates into any country, it was held by the Roman party that his successors were not bound by his act. Alexander IV, in consequence of the innumerable complaints which were made as to the misbehaviour of legates, endeavoured to put them under some restraint; but almost immediately after this, we find the same complaints as before.

The resistance of the English to the spoliation of their church by foreigners who performed none of the duties of pastors, and to the merciless exactions by which it was drained for the benefit of Rome, has been already mentioned. In France, where similar oppressions were attempted, they were met in a like spirit. And in that country the strength which the crown had acquired under St. Lewis, with the influence of his personal character, and the authority which his legal counsellors could advance from their study of ancient law, enabled him effectually to check the papal spirit of aggression on the national rights by the provisions of the Pragmatic Sanction.

A great forgery of bulls and other documents professing to emanate from the papal chancery was now carried on; and privileges of questionable character were often produced by persons whose interest they favoured, as the fruits of a visit to Rome. Richard, the successor of Becket in the see of Canterbury, after denouncing persons who attempted to pass themselves off as bishops by counterfeiting “the barbarism of Irish or Scottish speech,” goes on to complain of spurious bulls, and orders that the makers and users of such documents shall be periodically excommunicated. Innocent III makes frequent mention of these forgeries, of which a manufactory was in his time discovered at Rome; and he exposes some of the tricks which were practised—such as that of affixing to a forgery a genuine papal seal taken from a genuine deed, the erasure of some words and the substitution of others. But the canons of later councils prove that the system of forgery survived these exposures and denunciations.

CANON LAW.

The canon law during this time received important additions. Gratian’s ‘Decretum’, notwithstanding his endeavour to harmonize the materials of which it was composed, gave rise to frequent questions, which drew forth papal decretals and rescripts in order to their resolution; and these all became part of the law of the church. This body of law had also been increased by the canons of important councils—some of which councils even claimed the title of general. From the growth of such additions, from the contradictions, the repetitions, and other defects of the existing canons, there was no small danger lest ecclesiastical law should fall into utter confusion. Many attempts had already been made to form a digest of the matter thus accumulated, when in 1230 Gregory IX, himself a man of great learning in canon law, intrusted the formation of an authoritative work to Raymond of Peñaforte, a Spanish Dominican, who, after three years of labour, with the help of other learned canonists, produced five books of Decretals; and to these a sixth, made up of five smaller books, was added by Boniface VIII in 1298. Thus it happens that the standard law-books of the Roman church date from the time when the power of the papacy was at its greatest height. By Gregory’s order, the Decretals compiled by Raymond were published at Paris in 1234, and at Bologna in the following year. In these collections the conflict between earlier and later authorities, which had perplexed the students of Gratian, no longer appeared. All obsolete matter was excluded, and the materials for decision of questions were ready at hand; and in consequence of the greater convenience of such books for use, Gratian’s work came to be practically superseded by them.

CHAPTERS.

When the election of bishops had passed into the hands of the cathedral chapters, members of these chapters pursued towards the bishops the same policy by which the ecclesiastical and other electors diminished the rights of the German crown—exacting concessions from every new bishop at the time of his election; and, although such “capitulations” were declared by Innocent III and other popes to be null, the practice continued. The pretensions of the chapters to privileges and independence rose higher. In some cases they became “close” (capitula clausa)—refusing to admit any members but such as could satisfy a certain standard of noble descent ;k but this exclusive system did not find favour with popes, when questions arising out of it were carried to them for decision.

As there was nothing in general to limit the number of canons, except the want of sufficient endowments for their support, a new system was introduced of appointing canons in reversion. These, who were styled domicellares, differed from the junior canons of Chrodegang’s rule, inasmuch as the juniors had small estates, while the domicellares, during their time of expectancy, had none; while on the other hand the domicellares, unlike the juniors, were entitled to vote in the chapter. But this unlimited multiplication of canonries, and the disposal of such dignities before they were vacant, were discouraged by popes and by several councils.

By way of some compensation for their former share in the appointment of bishops, sovereigns now acquired the “right of first prayers”—jus primarum precum—by which they were entitled to claim one piece of patronage from every new bishop or abbot. This privilege appears to have originated in an imitation of the similar interference with patronage which had lately been introduced by the popes, and the first recorded instance of it is said to be no older than the year 1242, when it was exercised by Conrad, son of Frederick II, as king of the Romans. But within a few years after that time, Richard of Cornwall and Rudolf of Hapsburg are found professing to have derived it from the ancient custom of their predecessors.

The evils which arose from long vacancies of sees had been much felt, and especially in England. During such times, which were protracted for the advantage of sovereigns, the tenants and the property of sees suffered greatly, while the diocese or the province was left without pastoral superintendence; and the decree of the fourth council of Lateran—that every see should be filled up within three months—was far from remedying the evil. But, although much is said of these things, it is only the abuse that is complained of by writers of the time, and the king’s right to the income during vacancy is admitted.  Philip the Fair asserts very strongly his claim in this respect, arguing that as, on the vacancy of a fief, the liege-lord stepped in, so the sovereign was entitled to the temporal jurisdiction and property belonging to a vacant see, prebend, or other dignity.

FEUDAL DUTIES OF CLERGY.

From the time when the questions of investiture and homage were settled, it was understood that bishops were subject to the performance of all feudal duties in consideration of their temporalities. Thus, in the reign of Philip Augustus, when the bishops of Orleans and Auxerre had withdrawn their troops from the national army, under the pretext that they were not bound to furnish them unless when the king commanded in person, Innocent III admitted the king’s right to the troops, provided that he had not invaded the especial property of the sees, although the question whether the bishops themselves were bound to serve was left for further consideration. At the Lateran council, Innocent, in forbidding secular potentates to exact oaths of fealty from such clergy as held no temporalities under them, admits the feudal right which arose out of temporalities; and the decisions of some later popes were in accordance with this view. Boniface VIII, however, in a bull addressed to William of Gainsborough, bishop of Worcester, affected to give him possession of the temporalities of his see, as well as of the spiritual jurisdiction. But Edward I obliged the bishop to renounce that clause in the bull which related to the temporalities, and fined him a thousand marks for having received a document so derogatory to the English crown.

The clergy now insisted on a right to immunity from lay taxation—a pretension which, according to the principles of the age, was fair, if it were understood to mean that the amount of their contributions to public purposes was to be assessed by members of their own order. But the clergy were very commonly disposed to extend it to a claim of entire exemption, whether from national taxes, from local rates, or from tolls on the conveyance of their property and of the produce of their estates. Against this unreasonable pretension the free cities of Lombardy took the lead in defending themselves by the infliction of civil disabilities on the clergy; and both there and elsewhere the opposite principle was eventually established. We have seen how much this question entered into the great quarrel between Boniface and Philip the Fair.

The question as to the immunity of the clergy from secular justice, which had been the chief occasion of Becket’s struggle with Henry II, had not been clearly decided. In England, although that constitution of Clarendon which had especially excited the archbishop’s indignation was not formally abrogated, even after his death, the full acknowledgment of the “rights and liberties of the English church” in the first article of Magna Charta, may seem to imply a virtual repeal of it. At a later time, Grossetete is found complaining that lay courts interfered with the rights of the clergy, although he was willing to allow that the secular officers should arrest a clerk detected in grievous crime, and should keep him until claimed by his ordinary. A council held by archbishop Boniface at Lambeth in 1261 complained that clerks were sometimes imprisoned on mere suspicion by laymen, who refused to give them up to the ordinary. The council enacted that laymen so offending should be punished by excommunication and interdict; that every bishop should provide one or more prisons for criminous clerks, and that clerks convicted of any crime which in a layman would, be capital, should be confined for life. In 1275 was enacted by the first statute of Westminster, that, if a clerk accused of any felony were demanded by his ordinary, his person should be given up, but the charge should be investigated by the secular judge, and, if the clerk were found guilty, his lands and other property should be seized into the hands of the king. If, however, he were able to purge himself in the spiritual court, it was ordered both by the council of Lambeth and in the Westminster statute that the confiscated property should be restored.

In other countries also the clergy endeavoured to secure exemption from all secular jurisdiction. Frederick II, both at his coronation as emperor in 1220, and at his reconciliation with Gregory IX ten years later, acknowledged such exemption in broad terms, with the single exception on the latter occasion, of cases relating to feudal matters.

Yet although the clergy were able to obtain such acknowledgments, the evident justice of the objections raised by Henry II of England and others to the actual working of the system had the effect of bringing about a stricter execution of the ecclesiastical laws against offending clerks. Thus Innocent III, while forbidding the laity to draw clergymen before secular courts, was careful to order that the ecclesiastical courts should render full justice to the laity, and that bishops should deal strictly in the punishment of clergymen who were convicted of crime. And, while the officers of secular justice were entitled to arrest a clerk and to detain him until claimed by his ecclesiastical superior, the ecclesiastical authorities were forbidden, after a clerk had been degraded from his orders for his crimes, to provide for his escape from the secular authorities.

JUDICATURE

The church claimed an oversight of the administration of justice, on the theory that the secular powers derived from it their commission to execute justice, and that the church was still entitled to exercise its right through priests. And on the ground that crimes are also sins, or on some other ground, the clergy contrived to bring within the scope of their canons and jurisdiction a multitude of affairs which seemed rather to belong to the secular province. Hence arose frequent complaints of encroachment on both sides. Matthew Paris relates that in 1247 an association of French nobles drew up an agreement for the purpose of restoring the former state of things, in which the ecclesiastical courts had limited their cognizance to matters of heresy, marriage, and usury, and that St. Lewis affixed his seal to this document. It has indeed been remarked as a singular circumstance, that for this important movement of the French nobles no other authority than that of the English chronicler is known but although it is not recorded by the French annalists of the time, it would seem that the story is confirmed by evidence of other kinds.

The too frequent use of ecclesiastical censures, such as  excommunication and interdict, the slightness of the occasions on which they were pronounced, and the evident injustice of the sentences themselves in many cases, tended to lessen their effect on the minds of men;  and, with a view of restoring this, the clergy endeavoured to get the spiritual sentences enforced by temporal penalties. Thus Philip of Swabia was persuaded to annex outlawry to the anathema of the church; Frederick II in 1220 made a somewhat similar promise; and the addition of the secular to the ecclesiastical sentence is embodied in the book of laws known by the title of ‘Schwabenspiegel’, which was drawn up between 1270 and 1285. But these laws do not appear to have been put in practice; and we have seen that St. Lewis refused to grant the petition of his bishops when they desired that the sentences of the church might be carried out by secular penalties in France.

Another new engine of discipline was the excommunication lata sententiae; by which it was meant that persons guilty of certain gross crimes should be considered as having already had a sentence of excommunication passed on them, and as being subject to its penalties without any further formality.

ARCHDEACONS.

We have already seen that, on account of the misconduct of archdeacons, bishops endeavoured to relieve themselves in some degree by the appointment of officials or penitentiaries, on whom the business of the archdeacons was devolved as much as possible; and this practice continued throughout the thirteenth century. Another new class of ecclesiastical dignitaries arose in consequence of the loss of the Latin possessions in the Holy Land, by which a great number of bishops were deprived of their occupation and income. Some of these were found useful by the prelates of the West as assistants in the performance of their functions; and, as it was thought well to keep up this titular episcopate, in the hope that the East might yet be recovered, employment was found for many “bishops in the parts of the infidels” by regular engagements as suffragans in the dioceses of other bishops, who seem to have very commonly devolved on them the performance of the more ordinary episcopal functions.

BISHOPS « IN PARTIBUS ».

The property of the church and of the monastic bodies was still increasing. In the south of France, the prevalence of heresy afforded a colour for requiring that no person should make his will without the presence of a priest, and that any one who should neglect this should be excluded from Christian burial until the church were satisfied. But such a provision was as likely to serve the church by securing the bounty as the orthodoxy of the dying man, and it was repeated in other canons without any reference to heresy, but with a direct view to the encouragement of bequests to the church. In some quarters, however, measures began to be now taken for restraining the growth of ecclesiastical and monastic property. Thus a parliament at Westminster, in 1279, enacted, under pain of forfeiture, that no bequests should be made to spiritual corporations, or to the “dead hand,” except with the king’s special consent. The clergy were greatly annoyed by this statute; but king Edward told them to refrain from any resolution to the disadvantage of the crown and the state, if they set any value on the baronies which they held under the sovereign; and other statutes of mortmain, with enactments of similar tendency, followed in the course of the same reign. When the bishops represented that such acts were an infringement of the liberties promised to the church by Henry III in his confirmation of the Great Charter, and desired that they might be mitigated, Edward replied that nothing must be done without the royal license, but that he would grant this according as might be expedients In Germany the bishops endeavoured by the enactment of canons to set aside the principle which required that, in order to the validity of a will, the testator should afterwards have been able to go abroad without support; and, finding their canons ineffectual, they tried to secure the validity of wills by inserting in them curses against any who should question it.

The advocates, who had for centuries been felt by churches and monasteries as an oppressive weight, were now somewhat restrained in their tyranny. Honorius III, after strongly denouncing their evil practices, orders that, whenever the office of advocate should be vacant, churches shall not grant it away, and especially that no church shall have more than one advocate. Philip of Swabia forbade the advocates to exact enforced labour; Frederick II ordered that they should not build castles, and in other ways circumscribed their powers of doing mischief; and in the end of the century Adolphus of Germany forbade them to interfere with the endowments of the church or clergy.

CLERICAL CELIBACY.

Celibacy was enforced by canons as before, and was now established as the rule in Bohemia, Hungary, Poland, and in the Scandinavian kingdoms, which had formerly held out against it; but it is evident, both from the satirical vernacular poetry which was now largely produced in various countries, and also from more serious testimony, that the clergy in general had fallen into disrespect, which was increased by the startling contrast between their lives and the growingly mysterious sanctity of their professions; between the severity with which offences against orthodoxy were treated and the lenient toleration of immorality. And while celibacy was rigidly enjoined on the clergy, all the chief schoolmen of the age—Albert the Great, Thomas of Aquino, Bonaventura, Duns Scotus, and others—agree in representing it as merely a matter of ecclesiastical discipline, as to which some of them would not unwillingly have seen an alteration.

II.

MONASTICISM

The variety of religious orders, which in the preceding century had been a subject of perplexity and complaint, was restrained in its further increase by a canon of the fourth Lateran council, which enacted that any person who might wish to adopt a monastic life should take up one of the rules which had already been approved, instead of attempting to invent a new one. The only very considerable additions which were made to the number of orders within this century were the two great fraternities of Dominic and Francis. But as these, by proclaiming mendicancy as their principle, excited many imitators, Gregory X, at the second council of Lyons, reduced the unbridled multitudes of friars to four orders, joining with the Dominicans and Franciscans the Carmelites (who had adopted the mendicant system) and the Augustinian eremites.

The two great mendicant orders surpassed all other monastic bodies in vigour and in popularity. They were to the elder orders much as these had been to the secular clergy—outshining them in the display of the qualities which were most admired, and endeavouring to surpass and supersede them in every way. Matthew Paris tells us that they disparaged the Cistercians as rude and simple; the Benedictines, as proud and epicurean. The mendicants increased the more readily because they were able to dispense with costly buildings. Their numbers were recruited, not only by young men who flocked into the mendicant cloisters, often against the will of their parents, but by many members of the older orders; and, while the friars were allowed by popes to receive accessions from other orders, it was forbidden that any other order should receive members from the friars. By the institution of tertiaries they were so widely connected with the laity, that a writer of the age speaks of almost every one as being enrolled on the lists of one or other of the new fraternities. And while the mendicants penetrated, as none had before done, to the very poorest classes of men, they knew too how to recommend themselves to the rich and great. They were favoured by popes, who employed them in business both ecclesiastical and secular; they were familiar with the courts of princes, and were trusted by them with offices, and with the conduct of negotiations, which might have seemed strangely incongruous with their rigid and unworldly professions. Bishops of the more zealous kind, such as Grossetete, of Lincoln, employed them in their dioceses, to make up for the deficient zeal or ability of the secular clergy; and they soon assumed for themselves authority to act independently of episcopal sanction, and were so far countenanced by the privileges they acquired from popes that they had little to fear from the opposition of bishops. They invaded parishes and derided the ministrations of the secular clergy, while they endeavoured to draw everything to themselves; their services were shorter, livelier, and more attractive; they preached, administered the sacraments, and directed consciences; they persuaded the dying that bounty to their order, death in its habit,y and burial in their cloisters, were the surest means to salvation. By hearing confessions, they annulled the penitential discipline; for while one formal confession a year to the parish priest was considered to satisfy the decree of the Lateran council, the intention of that canon was frustrated by the system of confession to strangers and interlopers.

Although Francis had expressly discouraged study, his order, as well as that of Dominic, was soon able to boast of men of the highest intellect and learning. In like manner, although both he and Dominic had intended that their followers should avoid ecclesiastical dignities, we find before the end of the century many Franciscan and Dominican bishops, and even a Franciscan pope. So too the extreme plainness which was at first affected in their houses and churches, was soon superseded by an almost royal splendour of architecture and decoration; and, while the rough exterior of dress was still in general kept up, there were some mendicants who took advantage of the commissions on which they were employed to exhibit themselves on fine horses, with gilt saddles, arrayed in splendid robes, and with boots of a fashion peculiar to knights or warriors. It was said that a friar had been informed by revelation that the devils, who yearly held a council against the order, had devised three especial means for its ruin—“familiarity with women, reception of unprofitable members, and handling of money”; and, although we may doubt the truth of the story, we cannot fail to understand its significance. Matthew Paris, who, as a Benedictine of the great monastery of St. Alban’s, delights in denouncing the faults of the new orders, tells us that the mendicants, within a quarter of a century from their first settlement in England, had degenerated more than any of the older monastic orders had done in three or four centuries; and a letter written in the name of the secular clergy to Henry III of England contrasts their profession with their practice by saying that “although having nothing, they possess all things; and, although without riches, they grow richer than all the rich.”

Among other labours, the friars undertook that of religious teaching; and it is said that the freshness of their lectures enabled them to triumph over the somewhat faded and spiritless performances of the other teachers. Paris was then the intellectual centre ot Europe. The university had been continually advancing in reputation and influence, until in 1229 it was broken up, in consequence of a serious conflict with the municipal authorities. After having applied in vain to the queen-mother and the bishop for redress of their alleged wrongs, the professors dispersed, with their respective trains of students, into provincial towns, to which their residence gave for a time an unwonted celebrity. At this time, while the regular theological teaching of the university was in abeyance at Paris, the Dominicans, with the bishop’s permission, established a professorship of theology, which they filled with a succession of their most eminent doctors; and, when the university was able to resume its place in Paris, it was found necessary to guard against the aggressive spirit of the friars. No open outbreak, however, took place until 1251, when the secular clergy complained that, of the twelve theological professorships, three were occupied by the canons of Paris, and two by Dominicans; so that, if the five other monastic communities of the city were each to get a professorship, only two out of the whole number would be left for the seculars, for whom the whole had originally been intended. A fresh decree was therefore passed, that no religious order should be allowed to hold more than one of the theological chairs. Against this decision the Dominicans appealed to Innocent IV, who, possibly thinking that the papacy had no further need of the special services of the mendicants, decided against them. But within a few days after having issued his judgment, Innocent died, and the friends of the Dominicans did not scruple to attribute his death to the effect of their prayers. Alexander IV, perhaps alarmed by his predecessor’s end, rescinded the bull of Innocent, and decreed that the chancellor of Paris might appoint professors either from the religious orders or from the secular clergy. The university, in order to avoid the operation of the decree, professed to dissolve itself; and in consequence of this step it was placed under excommunication by the pope’s representatives, the bishops of Orleans and Auxerre. In 1256 four archbishops, who had been chosen as arbiters, awarded two professorships to the Dominicans, but under the condition that they should not be admitted into the academic society without the consent of the seculars. But the pope rejected this compromise, and, with the permission of king Lewis (who, as a tertiary of St. Francis, was favourable to the mendicants), he issued bull after bull, until in 1257 the university was compelled to succumb to the friars, and to admit at once as teachers the great Dominican Thomas of Aquino, and the great Franciscan Bonaventura.

But, although the preachers and the minorites were in some respects united by a common interest, their orders were also rivals of each other, so that jealousies and collisions might readily arise between them. While the Franciscans carried reverence for their “seraphic father” to the degree of idolatry, the great miracle of the stigmata was denied and ridiculed by the Dominicans. In their philosophical principles, the Dominicans were nominalists and the Franciscans realists; and as to some important points of religious doctrine they might be regarded as opposite schools. Thus, as to the question of grace and free-will, while the Dominicans, under the guidance of Aquinas, held the Augustinian system, the Franciscans, under Scotus, were semipelagian. And as to the immaculate conception of the blessed Virgin, while the Franciscans advocated the opinion which in our own time has become an article of the Roman faith, the Dominicans strenuously opposed it.

But the Franciscans were also divided among themselves by differences both broad and deep. Even during the lifetime of St. Francis, Elias, who afterwards became master of the order, had taken advantage of his absence in Egypt to introduce some mitigations of the rule, on the ground that the grace which had been given to the founder was not to be expected of his successors; and after the death of Francis he had more freely developed his views in departing from the original idea of the order. When Francis had been canonized, and a church was to be built in his honour at Assisi, Elias, in defiance of the saint’s own precepts, resolved that it should have all the splendour that could be given to it by beauty of design and by richness of materials and ornament. Many members of the order began to murmur against the strict rule of poverty; and Gregory IX relaxed it in 1230, declaring that the founder’s testament, on which the opposition to the change was rested, had no power to bind his successors. But a strong and earnest party, who were known by the names of Zelatores or Spirituals, refused to accept this relaxation, and, while the church of Assisi was rising in all the glory of variegated marbles and gilding, of decorative painting and sculpture, these rigid professors of poverty buried themselves among the rocks and forests of the Apennines. Elias dealt severely with the members of this party, and Gregory, on receiving a protest against his mitigation of the rule, punished the authors of the movement. But Elias, after having been already deposed from the headship of the order and restored to it, was finally deprived in 1239, and spent the remainder of his days under papal excommunication at the court of the emperor Frederick, whose hatred of the papacy and the mendicant orders he probably helped to exasperate.

In 1245 Innocent IV issued a fresh relaxation of the rule—declaring that the property of the order belonged to the apostolic see, but that the members were entitled to appoint prudent men to manage it for their use. Two years later, John of Parma, formerly a professor at Paris, became head of the order, and under him the rigid party gained the ascendency. The spirituals declared that in John their founder had come to life again; but with his ideas of monastic rigour John combined some apocalyptic fancies, derived from abbot Joachim of Fiore, which were widely prevalent in the order, and could hardly be regarded as consistent with dutiful obedience to the Roman see. In consequence of the excitement which had arisen as to these opinions (though nominally on the ground that the spirit of laxity was too strong for him), John, at the suggestion of Alexander IV, resigned his mastership in 1256. By his recommendation Bonaventura was chosen as his successor; and under the new master’s conciliatory rule, the order in 1260 asked and received leave from Alexander IV to abolish the interpretations of Innocent IV, except in so far as they agreed with those of Gregory IX.

Among the most prominent champions of the university of Paris in its contest with the mendicants, was a doctor of the Sorbonne, named William, a native of St. Amour, in Franche Comté, who, not content with acting on the defensive, vigorously assailed the whole system of mendicancy. He preached against the friars with an eloquence which their most famous orators could hardly rival, while eager audiences listened to him with such prepossessions as had been naturally produced in them by the late assumptions of the mendicants; and he sent forth a treatise ‘Of the Perils of the Last Times’, in which he unsparingly chastised the principles and the practice of the friars, and applied to them the description of the false teachers of whom St. Paul spoke as about to arise in the perilous times which were to come. The book was censured by an assembly of bishops at Paris; but the Dominicans, not content with this, prevailed on king Lewis to send it to the pope, who committed it for examination to four cardinals—one of them being the Dominican Hugh of St. Cher. William of St. Amour, too, was sent to the pope, with others, on the part of the university; but on caching Anagni, where Alexander then was, he found that his book had been already condemned; that it had been burnt in front of the cathedral, under the pope’s own eyes; and that strict orders were given for the immediate destruction of all copies of it, although it had not been found to contain any heresy, but was blamed only as tending to stir up enmity against the mendicants. William was forbidden to teach, was deprived of all preferments “had or to be had,” and, in consequence of the pope’s having demanded his banishment, with that of three others who had opposed the friars in the university, he withdrew to his native province, where he remained until after the death of Alexander; but his treatise, notwithstanding the repeated sentences against it, was translated into French, and even versified in that language. In 1263 William took advantage of a bull of Urban IV to return to Paris, and three years later he produced an improved edition of his book, which he defended with spirit and success against the greatest champions of the mendicant orders, such as Albert the Great, Bonaventura, and Thomas of Aquino. There is a letter from Clement IV to William, in which the pope professes to have read only a part of the revised work, and cautions the writer as to the display of his old animosity, but it does not appear that the pope ever proceeded further in his censure.

William of St. Amour died in 1270. We are told by a contemporary Franciscan writer that he drew away many members from the mendicant orders; and the popular poetry of the time gives evidence of the strong impression which his attacks on them had made on the general mind.

Among the charges brought against the mendicants by William was that of believing the “everlasting gospel”; under which name it would seem that we are not to understand any single book, but the substance of abbot Joachim’s apocalyptic interpretations and of his doctrine as to successive states of the church. In 1254 appeared a book entitled an ‘Introduction to the everlasting gospel’, in which, among other objectionable propositions, it was asserted that the gospel had brought no one to perfection, and was to be superseded by a new dispensation in the year 1260. This book was long supposed to have been the work of John of Parma, but is now known to have been written by another Franciscan—Gerard or Gerardino of Borgo San Donnino—who, on account of the reproach which his opinions brought on the order, was imprisoned for eighteen years by his superiors, and at last was buried in unhallowed earth. In the year after the publication of the ‘Introduction’, the university of Paris gained something of a triumph over the mendicants by obtaining from Alexander IV a condemnation of the book, with its “schedules”, in which a great part of the mischievous matter was contained; and the ‘Introduction’ was burnt at Paris, although, out of consideration for the mendicants, the burning, instead of being public, took place within the  Dominican convent. But the opinions of Joachim’s school spread widely among the Franciscans, more especially as the relaxations of the rule by papal authority tended to alienate the “spiritual” party more and more from the papacy, and to convince them that Rome was, as Joachim’s followers taught, the Babylon and the great harlot of the Apocalypse. The extreme section of this party came to be known by the name of fraticelli—a name which, like that of beghards, was used in many ways, but, as applied to the minorites, denoted those who wished to carry the principle of beggary even further than Francis himself—insisting on the duty of living on alms from day to day.

In 1279 Nicolas III issued a bull which is known by the title of Exiit, mitigating the rule of St. Francis in some respects, and declaring that, although the right of property was in the apostolic see, the friars were entitled to the use of such things as were necessary. By this the fraticelli were exasperated, and a new prophet of their party arose in Peter John of Olivi. Olivi was born in 1247 at Serignan, near Narbonne; he was dedicated to the Franciscan order at the age of twelve, studied at Paris, and about 1278 made himself conspicuous by the extravagance of his language as to the blessed Virgin, which the annalist of the order pronounces to be “not praises, but fooleries,” such as the object of them would herself be unwilling to accept. The scandal excited by Olivi’s writings on this subject was so great that the general of the order, Jerome of Ascoli (afterwards Nicolas IV), condemned him to burn them with his own hand. Olivi also plunged deeply into the quarrels between the opposite parties of the Franciscans, and distinguished himself by his severity against all laxity in the order. His views on prophecy were set forth in various books, of which his ‘Postills on the Apocalypse’ were the most notorious. He taught that there were three states of the church; that in the first, God had revealed Himself as Fear; in the second, as Wisdom; and in the third, He was to be revealed as Love. As Christianity had superseded Judaism, so a new state, under the Holy Ghost, was to supersede Christianity; St Peter was to give way to St. John. The history of the church was divided into seven ages, of which the sixth (opened by St. Francis, the angel of the sixth seal) was now running out, and the seventh was to coincide with the third state. The renewal of the church was to be effected through the tertiaries of the Franciscan order; and as the preachers of the gospel in the apostolic age found more acceptance among heathens than among Jews, so the new spiritual mission would have greater success with Jews, Saracens, and Tartars, than with the fleshly church of the Latins. The Holy Ghost was to receive from the church as Christ had received from the Holy Ghost.h Of Rome and its hierarchy Olivi spoke in terms of the strongest denunciation; and he supposed that the Roman church was to be destroyed by Frederick of Sicily before the coming of Antichrist.

In 1282 Olivi’s doctrines were investigated by the authorities of the order, who condemned him in a document which, from having been sealed by seven inquisitors, is known as the ‘Book of the Seven Seals’; but he appeared uninvited before them, preached in such a manner as to satisfy them of his orthodoxy, and subscribed the condemnation of the errors which were imputed to him. In 1290, however, Nicolas IV addressed a letter to the general of the Franciscans, desiring him to proceed against the “brethren of Narbonne”, the followers of Olivi. In consequence of this, many of the party were imprisoned, or subjected to other severities. Olivi himself retracted in 1292, and is said to have emitted two orthodox confessions on his death-bed, in 1297. Yet although he had died in peace with the church, his memory was not allowed to rest. The council of Vienne, in 1311, condemned some opinions which were imputed to him, and in 1325 pope John XXII, after an inquiry by eight doctors, condemned his Postills on account of the errors which they contained. The reading of his books had already been forbidden in the order of which he had been a member; the inquisition of Toulouse denounced him as a false prophet; and it is said (although on doubtful authority) that after the sentence of John XXII his bones were taken from the grave and burnt. Yet there were many stories of miracles done by his remains, and his writings were widely circulated in translations. The adherents of his opinions denied that either pope or general council was entitled to condemn them; they reverenced him as a saint and a martyr, nay, as the “mighty angel”, who “had in his hand a little book open”, and they kept a festival in his honour. The condemnation of his writings was rescinded by Sixtus IV, himself a Franciscan, in the latter part of the fifteenth century, when they were supposed to be no longer dangerous. In the meantime, the discords within the Franciscan order continued. The stricter and the laxer parties by turns got the ascendency, and each in the day of its triumph banished the members of the opposite faction. The fraticelli became more and more extravagant in their opinions and practices. They pretended to visions and revelations; they maintained that no pope was entitled to alter the rule of St. Francis—that since the time of Nicolas III there had been no real pope or prelate except among themselves. In 1294, Celestine V combined them with his own especial followers in the order of Celestine eremites. But Boniface VIII, who had no love for the mendicants, rescinded this privilege, and banished them to one of the Greek islands, where they were not allowed to remain. One of Olivi’s disciples, a Provençal, is said to have been elected pope in St. Peter’s by five men and thirteen women of the party; and by these and others their doctrines were spread into Sicily, Greece, and other countries, becoming everywhere a leaven of opposition and discontent, actively though secretly working against the papacy.

III.

Rites and Usages.

Although the canon by which the fourth Lateran council enforced the belief of transubstantiation was generally construed as prescribing that doctrine in its grossest form, there was yet in many minds a strong repugnance to such a manner of understanding the Eucharistic presence. Many, while they held the belief that the Saviour was present in the sacrament, shrank from defining the mode of His presence; and the university of Paris, the most distinguished school of theology in Christendom, was especially suspected of lagging behind the development of orthodoxy on this point. In 1264, it was reported that an archbishop of Narbonne, when at Rome, had expressed the opinion that the body of Christ was not on the altar in reality, “but as a thing signified under its sign,” and had declared this to be the general opinion of the Parisian teachers; and, although he disavowed the words which were imputed to him, the charge can hardly have been without some foundation. At a later time, John of Paris, or de Soardis, a famous Dominican, although he professed his own belief in transubstantiation, maintained that it was enough for the satisfaction of the ecclesiastical definitions as to faith to believe the presence without determining the manner of it; that instead of holding a change of substance, men were at liberty to suppose an assumption of the quality of bread into union with the Saviour’s human nature. For this opinion John was called in question by some French prelates and divines, who after an examination of his doctrines forbade him to teach at Paris; and, while engaged in prosecuting an appeal to the pope, he died, so that the question was left undetermined.

But, whatever latitude of opinion as to the manner of the Eucharistic presence may have been assumed by some persons, or may have been really within the intention of the Lateran decree, the ordinary view of the matter appears beyond all doubt from the stories of miracles, in which the consecrated wafer took the form of a beautiful child, of a bleeding piece of flesh, or the like. Such stories had a great effect on the popular mind; but that they were not universally accepted appears from a passage of Alexander of Hales, who, while strongly maintaining the established doctrine, speaks of some miracles in its favour as being the effect of human, or possibly of diabolical, contrivance.

Strange questions were proposed and discussed by the theologians of the time in connexion with the doctrine of transubstantiation. Thus, in the Greek church, where that doctrine had been established as well as in the West, there was a controversy whether the Saviour’s body, after having been received in the Eucharist, was incorruptible, as after His passion and resurrection, or corruptible as before. Alexander of Hales inquires whether, if the Eucharistic body appear in such forms as the miraculous stories represented, it ought to be eaten, and he replies in the negative. It was asked whether, if a mouse or a dog should eat the consecrated host, it would eat the Lord’s body? Peter Lombard, in the preceding century, Pope Innocent III, and Bonaventura answered in the negative. But this hesitation as to the consequences of the doctrine soon passed away. Thomas of Aquino boldly maintained the affirmative, adding that this no more derogated from the Saviour’s dignity than did His submission to be crucified by sinners; and Peter Lombard’s adverse opinion came to be noted as one of those points in which the authority of the “Master of the Sentences” was not generally held good.

We have already seen that the heightened ideas as to the sacredness of the Eucharistic symbols gave occasion for scruples as to the administration of the chalice, and during the century which witnessed the formal decree of transubstantiation, the withdrawal of this part of the sacrament from the laity became general, although the older practice still continued in many places, and especially in monasteries. This withdrawal of the cup was defended by all the great theologians of the time, but in some cases with curious qualifications and exceptions. The authority of Gelasius I, in the fifth century, against administration in one kind only, was set aside, not by the pretext of later Roman controversialists, that his words were meant against the Manicheans only, but by the assertion that he spoke of the priest alone. And, as in the preceding century, divines who, on the ground of the doctrine of concomitancy, maintain the new practice as to the administration of the sacrament, are found at the same time declaring their belief that the administration under both kinds is of higher perfection or conveys a fuller grace.

In order to reconcile the laity to the withdrawal of the consecrated chalice, it now became usual to give them unconsecrated wine, which was said to be intended as a help to them in swallowing the host; and in some places a compromise was attempted by leaving in the chalice a small portion of the consecrated wine, and pouring on it other wine, which was then distributed to the people.

The ceremony of elevating the host had been used in the Greek church from the seventh (perhaps as early as the sixth) century, but without any meaning beyond that of typifying the Saviour’s exaltation; nor, when it was adopted by the western church, in the eleventh century, did Hildebert, Ivo of Chartres, Rupert of Deutz, and their contemporaries, give any other reason for the observance of it. But when the Lateran canon had prescribed the doctrine of transubstantiation, it was ordered that both at the elevation of the host in the mass, and when it was carried through the streets to a sick person, all who were present should fall on their knees in reverence to it. Hence arose a festival of Adoration of the Host, which eventually became the festival of Corpus Christi. The common story refers the origin of this to a nun of Liege named Juliana, who from the year 1230 had frequent raptures, in which she saw a full moon, with a small part of it in darkness; and it was revealed to her that the full moon was the glory of the church, and that the dark part signified the want of a festival in especial honour of the Lord’s body. For twenty years Juliana kept this revelation to herself, praying that some worthier organ might be chosen for the publication of it. At length, however, she disclosed it to a canon of Liege, by whom it was told to the archdeacon James—afterwards pope Urban IV. Urban, who, after attaining the papacy, had his attention further drawn to the subject by the miracle of Bolsena, decreed in 1264 an annual festival in honour of the Eucharistic body; and, as the day of the original institution of the sacrament—Thursday before Easter—was already much taken up with other ceremonies, Thursday after the octave of Pentecost was fixed on for the celebration of the Corpus Christi. The death of Urban followed within two months after the issuing of this decree, and his order did not meet with general obedience; but at the council of Vienne, in 1311, the festival was established for the whole church by a bull of Clement V.

The increased mystery and awfulness with which the sacrament of the Lord’s supper was invested by the new doctrine had not the effect of rendering the general reception of it more frequent. Although some councils endeavoured to enforce the older number of three communions yearly, it was found that the canon of the Lateran council, which allowed of one yearly reception as enough for Christian communion, became the rule. Instead of personally communicating, people were taught to rely on the efficacy of masses, which were performed by the priests for money; and from this great corruptions naturally followed.

OPUS OPERATUM

The number of seven sacraments was in this age firmly established. Among them a pre-eminence was indeed given to baptism and the Lord’s supper, as having been instituted by the Saviour during his earthly life; but it was held that he had, in truth, instituted the other sacraments also, although “not by exhibiting but by promising them”.

The doctrine of opus operatum was now introduced, and was first distinctly laid down by Duns Scotus, whose words will suffice to convey the interpretation of it, as understood in the middle ages :—“A sacrament confers grace through the virtue of the work which is wrought, so that there is not required any inward good motion such as to deserve grace; but it is enough that the receiver place no bar” in the way of its operations.

INDULGENCES

During the thirteenth century, the system of indulgences was carried further, both by the development of its theory and by new practical applications. From the idea of the union and communion of all the faithful in one spiritual body was deduced the idea of benefits which might be derived by one member of the body from another. It was supposed that the saints, by their works of penitence, and by their unmerited sufferings in this world, had done more than was necessary for their own salvation, and that their superabundant merits, with those of the Saviour, formed a treasury, of which the church possessed the keys, and which it could apply for the relief of its members, both in this life and in purgatory. It was, indeed, said that the Saviour himself was the source of all merit; but the merits of his saints were more and more put forward in the popular teaching of the age. The supposed treasury of merits came to be applied in a wholesale way, as in the plenary indulgence which had been set forth as an inducement to join the crusades for the recovery of the Holy Land, and which was now extended to religious wars in Europe, or to wars undertaken by the popes against Christian sovereigns with whom they had quarrelled. And of this wholesale offer of indulgences, another remarkable instance was the jubilee instituted by Boniface VIII.

Each of the two great mendicant orders held forth its special indulgence as a means of attracting popular devotion. The Franciscans offered the indulgence of the Portiuncula—the church so called at Assisi—granted, according to their story, by the Saviour himself in answer to the prayer of St. Francis, and confirmed on earth by pope Honorius III. By this indulgence a full pardon of all sins was offered to every one who, on the festival of St. Peter’s chains (Aug. 1) should visit the Portiuncula and make his confession; and it is said that as many as 100,000 persons were sometimes drawn together by the hope of partaking in this privilege.

The Dominican indulgence was connected with the Rosary—an instrument of devotion which had been known in earlier times, but which now became the especial property of this order. The manner of performing the devotion of the rosary was by reciting the angelic salutation, with a prayer for the blessed Virgin’s intercession in the hour of death. A rosary of 150 beads represented a like number of aves, which were divided into fifteen portions, and between these portions a recitation of the Lord’s prayer was interposed. Some mystery of the Christian faith was proposed for meditation during the performance of this exercise, and the whole was concluded by a repetition of the creed.

Bishops had formerly been accustomed to grant indulgences, and it was still considered that they were entitled to do so within their own dioceses, unless specially prohibited by higher authority. But the fourth council of Lateran, in consequence of the indiscreet profusion with which indulgences had been given by bishops, limited the amount which could be granted at the consecration of a church to one year, and that which could be granted at the anniversary of the consecration to forty days. So Honorius III in 1255 abolished the indulgence of Sarracinesco, among the Sabine hills, because the clergy misled the people by telling them that they were cleared of their sins as a stick is peeled of its bark. But, while they thus limited the abuses practised by inferior persons, the popes in their own exercise of the power of indulging and absolving went further than ever. The commutation of penances and obligations for money was more shamelessly carried out. In like manner, the power of dispensing for breach of a law, which had formerly been limited to offences already committed, and had been execised by bishops in general, became now the privilege of the pope alone, and was exercised also with regard to future or intended violations of the law. And it was held that the pope’s authority extended to dispensing with everything except the law of nature and the articles of the faith ;n nay, according to some writers, he might dispense with the law of nature itself, provided that he did not contradict the gospel or the articles of faith.

How much the indulgences of the church imported, was a matter of dispute. Some divines held that in order to their efficacy the ordinary conditions of penitence and devotion were necessary on the part of the receivers. But others asked, If this were so, what was there in the indulgences? and the popular opinion understood them in the plainest sense, without any idea of conditions or limitations. Some writers, while admitting this, said that the people were deceived, but held that the deceit was lawful on account of the good effects which were supposed to result from it. “The church deceives the faithful”, says William of Auxerre, “yet doth she not lie.” In like manner Thomas of Aquino says that, if the offers of indulgence may not be literally understood, the preaching of the church cannot be excused from the charge of falsehood; that, if inordinate indulgences are given, “so that men are called back almost for nothing from the works of penitence, he who gives such indulgences sins, yet nevertheless the receiver obtains full indulgence.”

CONFESSION

The enactment of the Lateran council, that every faithful person should confess once a year, was intended to remedy the evils which had arisen out of the promiscuous use of indulgences by securing a periodical inquiry into the spiritual condition of each person; and the power which it conferred on those who were thus intrusted with the scrutiny and direction of all consciences was enormous, while, as we have already seen, it was in a great degree diverted from the parish priests to the mendicant friars, and so the benefit of the spiritual discipline intended by the Lateran canon was lost. Bonaventura holds that until the passing of this canon it had not been heretical to deny the necessity of confession for all, although from that time such a denial could not be maintained without heresy. But, although in this he is supported by Aquinas, Duns Scotus considers it “more reasonable to hold that confession falls under a positive Divine command.” Many other questions, of greater or less practical importance, arose out of the law of confession. Was it necessary in the case of mortal sin only, or of venial sins also? Again, was confession to a layman valid? Peter Lombard, relying in part on a treatise wrongly attributed to St. Augustine, had answered that it was. Albert the Great considers such confession as sacramental. Aquinas more cautiously says that, if the penitent perform his part of the work by contrition and confession, then, although the lay confessor cannot give priestly absolution, the Great High-priest will in case of need make up the defect; and thus confession to a layman, when a priest cannot be had, is “in a manner, although not fully, sacramental.” But Scotus holds a contrary opinion, and considers that it would be better for a man to put himself to shame for his sins, if he could do so with equal intensity of shame, than to confess to one who has no commission to judge.

Another question related to the extent of the efficacy of the sacerdotal absolution. In this century the absolution was changed from the precatory form which had until then been used into the declaratory “I absolve thee.” William of Auvergne, bishop of Paris, who died in 1249, writes that the confessor does not, like a secular judge, say “We absolve thee,” but that he prays over the penitent for God’s forgiveness and grace; and another writer of the age, in objecting to the new form, says that scarcely thirty years had passed since the time when the precatory form was used by all. But Thomas of Aquino replied to this writer in defence of the declaratory absolution, and by his authority, chiefly, it came to be established in the church. Aquinas, while he holds that the power of forgiving sins is with God only, says that He may exercise it through his priest as an instrument, and that the absolution is from guilt as well as from punishment.

PARDONERS

The abuses as to the matter of indulgences were in no small degree connected with the superstitious veneration of relics. Popes and councils attempted from time to time to check the practices of itinerant “quaestuaries,” who in England were known as “pardoners” and in Germany as “penny-preachers.” They denounce the ignorance of these men, their hypocritical pretensions to sanctity, their vicious and disreputable lives, the impudence with which they vended indulgences on the strength of the relics which they paraded, the danger that they might disseminate old heresies and errors; and they endeavour to remedy the evil by forbidding the pardoners to preach, by confining them to the display of their relics, by providing that these, if they could not be warranted as genuine, should at least be sanctioned by the pope, or by competent ecclesiastical authority, and by ordering that the profits of such exhibitions should not be appropriated by the showmen. But in the following centuries we find frequent notices which prove that the pardoners continued to carry on their trade with unabated impudence and with undiminished success.

LEGENDARY WRITERS

The prevailing veneration for saints called forth in this time some legendary writers who attained great fame and popularity—especially Symeon Metaphrastes in the Greek church, and James de Voragine (so called from his birth at Vorago—Viraggio or Varese, on the Gulf of Genoa) in the Latin. James, who was born about 1230, became a Dominican, was highly respected for his personal character, and in 1292 was raised to the archbishopric of Genoa by Nicolas IV. But his ‘Lombard History’ more commonly known by the title of ‘Golden Legend’, carries legendary extravagance to a degree which has been seldom, if ever, equalled. Yet notwithstanding this extravagance—or rather, perhaps, in consequence of it—the ‘Golden Legend’ became popular beyond all similar collections; it was translated into several languages; and even so late as the sixteenth century a divine who had spoken disrespectfully of it in a sermon was compelled by the theological faculty of Paris to retract his words.

About the same time with James of Viraggio wrote William Durantis or Durandus, who was born in the diocese of Beziers in 1237, became bishop of Mende in 1286, and died at Rome in 1296. Durantis was greatly honoured by popes, and was employed by them in important political business. He had in earlier life been a professor at Bologna, and his knowledge of both canon and civil law was displayed in a book entitled ‘Speculum Juris’, from which he got the name of Speculator. But his wider and more equivocal fame is derived from his ‘Rationale of Divine Offices’, in which the system of allegorical interpretation, which we have noticed in an earlier period, is carried to a very extravagant length. Yet, foolish and absurdly trifling as much of this book is, Durandus was not so foolish in other respects as the peculiar admiration which he has received in our own time and country might lead us to suppose; nor must we forget that many things which cannot among ourselves be repeated without manifest and ridiculous affectation, might in the thirteenth century have been said simply and naturally. In some important points, indeed, Durandus deserves the credit of having endeavoured rather to check than to forward the development of popular superstition. Perhaps a sufficient evidence of the popularity which the ‘Rationale’ attained may be found in the facts that it was one of the earliest works which issued from the press of Fust, and that forty editions of it, at least, were published before the end of the fifteenth century.

THE BLESSED VIRGIN

The veneration for the blessed Virgin increased so as more and more to encroach on the honour due to her Divine Son. The beginning of the movement for the doctrine and the celebration of her immaculate conception has been already noticed. The original celebration of the blessed Virgin’s conception did not relate to her having been conceived in her mother’s womb, but to her having conceived the Saviour of mankind. The earlier celebrations of her own conception did not attach to it the idea of her having been conceived without sin; nor, although the doctrine of the immaculate conception had been broached in the preceding century (when it was opposed by the powerful authority of St. Bernard), did it for a long time gain the support of any considerable theologian. Even the Franciscans, as Alexander of Hales, Antony of Padua, and Bonaventura, maintained that the Virgin was conceived in sin, until Duns Scotus asserted (although not with absolute certainty) the opposite opinion, which from the fourteenth century became the creed of the order. The Dominican Aquinas (who says that, although the Roman church does not celebrate her conception, it bears with certain churches in their celebration of it), argues that she was conceived in sin, but was sanctified in the womb, not by the removal of the fomes peccati, but by its being placed under restraint; that she never committed actual sin, because that would have been a disparagement of her Son; but that the “fomes” was not removed until she had conceived Him. Yet theologians who rejected the doctrine of the immaculate conception contributed to forward it by the extravagant language which they applied to St. Mary. A distinction had been drawn between the reverence which was due to the Saviour as God and as man : while his Divinity was to be worshipped with latria, his humanity was to be reverenced with hyperdulia, which was so styled as being greater than the dulia paid to saints. But now the human nature of the Saviour, as well as his Divinity, was to be worshipped with latria, while hyperdulia, which Aquinas defines as midway between dulia and latria, was to be rendered to the Virgin Mother. To her were applied a multitude of Scriptural expressions, which in truth had no reference to her. Thus, she was said to be the rock on which Christ was to build his church, because she alone remained firm in faith during the interval between his death and his resurrection. She was said to be typified by the tree of life, by the ark of Noah, by Jacob’s ladder which reached to heaven, by the burning bush which was not consumed, by Aaron’s rod that budded, and by many other scriptural figures, down to the apocalyptic “woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet.” And her sinlessness was supposed to be foreshown in the words of the Canticles—“Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee.” The greater and lesser ‘Psalters of the blessed Virgin’ in which the Psalms of David are parodied with unintentional profanity, although not the work of Bonaventura, to whom they have been ascribed, belong to the thirteenth century. And Bonaventura himself went great lengths in several works which were expressly devoted to her honour. In accordance with these developments of reverence for St. Mary, we find in the chronicles of the time notices of the introduction of devotions addressed to her, and of festivals and offices in celebration of her. And a fast of forty days before the festival of the assumption was kept by many persons, and was recommended, although not enforced, by Peckham, the Franciscan archbishop of Canterbury.

It was in this time that the house which had been inhabited by the holy family at Nazareth is said to have been carried by angels, first into Dalmatia, and then into the neighbourhood of Loreto, where, after having thrice changed its place, it finally settled, to draw to it the devotion and the offerings of innumerable pilgrims. To argue against such a story would be either superfluous or hopeless; but it may be well to state, as some of the most obvious objections to it, that the pilgrims to Palestine, although they mention churches on the site of the house where the blessed Virgin was visited by the angel, and on that of the house where the Saviour was brought up, give no hint that any remains of the houses themselves existed; that Urban IV in 1263, in reporting to St. Lewis the destruction of the church at Nazareth, says nothing of the “aedicula,” which later ingenuity has supposed to have been contained in it and miraculously preserved; and that, although the removal to Loreto is placed in the year 1294, no notice of it is to be found before the latter half of the fifteenth century.

The excess of reverence for the blessed Virgin found expression in a multitude of hymns; but in the time which we are now surveying, compositions of this kind were also produced which may be regarded as precious contributions to the stock of truly Christian devotional poetry. Among these may be mentioned, as perhaps the best known, the Dies Ira—probably (although not certainly) the work of Thomas of Celano, a Minorite, and one of the biographers of St. Francis; the Stabat Mater, which is generally ascribed to another Franciscan, Jacopone of Todi; and the German Easter hymn, Christus ist erstanden, which, like the Dies Irae, is introduced with wonderful effect in the most famous poem of recent times.

The drama was now pressed into the service of religion. The imitation of Plautus and Terence, which had marked the attempts of Roswitha, the nun of Gandersheim, in the tenth century, had given way to a vernacular drama, of which the subjects were not only Christian, but commonly founded on Scripture, as distinguished from legend; and such plays, which were usually acted by the members of confraternities, became important means of conveying some sort of knowledge of sacred history to the people. We have seen that the drama was even employed, although with indifferent success, as an instrument of conversion among the heathens of Livonia.

The number of canons directed in this century against the “festivals of fools” and other burlesque celebrations which grew out of religion; against profanations of churches and churchyards by dancing and revelry, by holding of markets and of civil courts, by secular plays, wakes, and the like; against the introduction of players, jugglers, and yet more disreputable persons into monasteries,—shows how strongly these abuses had become rooted. Peckham, archbishop of Canterbury, in 1279, endeavoured to check the disorders which had thus crept in, and the church was in some degree forced to give way, compromising the matter by allowing the children of the choir to celebrate their mummeries, while it forbade such celebrations by the clergy, and limiting the festival of the boy-bishop strictly to the Holy Innocents’ day, so that it should not begin until after vespers on St. John’s day.

INTERDICTS

The abuse of interdicts, and the indifference to them which arose out of that abuse, have been already mentioned. It was found that those who suffered from such sentences, now turned their indignation, not against the princes or others whose offences had provoked them, but against the ecclesiastics who had pronounced them. As they were uttered by bishops on all manner of slight occasions, popes often took the prudent line of superseding the diocesan authority, sometimes by annulling the sentence, sometimes by mitigating it. Recourse was occasionally had to temporal sovereigns by way of appeal against such sentences. Even St. Lewis annulled an interdict pronounced by the archbishop of Rouen in 1235, and one of the bishop of Poitiers in 1243; and in France it came to be regarded as a settled thing that the secular power was entitled to receive appeals in such cases. A council at Aschaffenburg, in 1292, speaks of the laity in some places as caring so little for interdicts that they took it on themselves to perform some of the offices, such as that of burial, which the clergy were charged to refuse to them. The monks often contributed to weaken the force of interdicts by making holes in the doors of their churches or by opening the windows, and so enabling the people, while standing outside, to hear the divine offices. This and other practices of a like tendency were forbidden by special canons.

IV.

Arts and Learning.

Between the middle of the eleventh century and the end of the thirteenth, the development of ecclesiastical architecture had been rapid and signal. In France before the year 1150, and in other countries north of the Alps a little later, the massive round-arched architecture which marked the beginning of this period was succeeded by a lighter and more graceful style, which had for its chief feature the pointed arch. This form of arch had been long known—in Provence, it is said, even from the time of Charlemagne—before it came into favour as the characteristic of a style; and the first church in which it becomes thus predominant is said to be that of St. Denys, rebuilt by abbot Suger about 1144. The transition from the Norman to the Gothic is exemplified in many great French churches, where the victory of the pointed arch and of the lighter forms is as yet incomplete; and the perfection of Gothic in that stage where it has shaken off the influence of the older style, but is still capable of further development, is seen in the “holy chapel” of Paris, built by St. Lewis exactly a century after the date of Suger’s work at St. Denys.

In England, the pointed arch was introduced from France in the latter part of the twelfth century. The specimens of the transitional style are few—the best known being the choir of Canterbury, (begun under, a French architect,) and the round part of the Temple church in London (A.D. 1175-1184). But the pointed architecture of England soon began to display features unborrowed from any foreign example—such as the combination of a number of narrow lancet-headed windows in one large design; and here the most perfect example of the pure early Gothic style is the cathedral of Salisbury (A.D. 1220-1258). Henry III, the contemporary of St. Lewis, was, like him, a munificent patron of the arts connected with religion, and has left his best monument in that part of Westminster abbey which was erected by him.

Into Spain, too, the Gothic style made its way from France; and there it appears in remarkable contrast with another style, which has in common with it the pointed arch, and from which it was on that account formerly supposed to have taken its origin—the Moorish or Saracenic architecture derived from the East. In Sicily, on the other hand, the pointed styles of the North and of the East appear to mingle harmoniously together, and even to admit, without any striking incongruity, elements which belong to the architecture of Greece and Rome.

In Germany, where a peculiar variety of the round-arched style had been developed, chiefly in the provinces along the Rhine, the pointed arch did not make its appearance until the beginning of the thirteenth century; but before the middle of that century, had been laid the foundation of the vast and still unfinished cathedral of Cologne. Another remarkable German Gothic church of this time is that erected at Marburg in honour of St. Elizabeth.

In Italy, where the native art of the eleventh and twelfth centuries produced, among other works, the cathedral and the leaning tower of Pisa, the new style never took root in its purity. In the buildings which are classed as belonging to it (except in a few, which were erected under foreign influence) the round arch is combined with the pointed, and the development of Gothic is controlled by the remembrance of the old classical forms. The earliest example of a pointed church is that of St. Andrew at Vercelli, begun by Cardinal Gualo after his legation in England, under the superintendence of an English architect (A.D. 1219) and next to this followed the church built in honour of St. Francis at Assisi (1228-1253) where the political connection of Elias, then general of the Franciscans, induced him to employ a German of the emperor’s train, named Jamesh Arnulf, the original architect of the cathedral at Florence, which was begun in 1294 or 1298, has been described as the son of this James, but was more probably only his pupil; but at Florence the character of northern Gothic is modified by the Italian taste, both in Arnulf s work and in Giotto’s bell-tower, which belongs to the following century. In Rome itself Gothic architecture never established a footing, although we are reminded of it by the pointed arches of a single church, by some portions of other churches, and by such works as sepulchral monuments and the canopies of altars.

At the same time with architecture, the arts of painting and sculpture, which as yet were chiefly employed as accessory to it, made rapid progress. In painting, the first who deviated from the traditional Byzantine style was Cimabue, who died in 1302. In sculpture, the genius of Nicolas of Pisa led the Italian revival; but much of the sculpture of this age in Italy, as at the cathedral of Orvieto, was the work of Germans. The staining of glass had been early brought to a perfection of richness in colour which was lost in the more ambitious and more correct productions of a later style; and the skill of illuminators, workers in mosaic, workers in metal, embroiderers, and other decorative artists, worthily contributed in their degrees to the splendour of the age which, in addition to the churches already named, produced, entirely or in their finest parts, such buildings as the cathedrals of Paris, Chartres, Reims, Bourges, Rouen, and Amiens, of Orvieto and Siena, of Toledo, of Lincoln, Glasgow, and Elgin.

During this time literature was much encouraged. Among the princes who patronized it, the emperor Frederick, and Alfonso X (the Wise), of Castile, are especially distinguished. Frederick in 1224 founded the university of Naples, with the intention of saving his Italian subjects from the necessity of seeking knowledge beyond his own dominions, nor would he allow them to study elsewhere; and, as it had suffered from the political troubles of the time, he founded it afresh in 1234. With a like view, and in order to punish Bologna for the part which it had taken in his quarrels with the popes, the emperor established the universities of Padua and Vienne. To this century is also ascribed the origin of some other universities—such as Toulouse (founded in order to counteract the teaching of the Albigenses), Ferrara, Piacenza, and Lisbon (which in 1308 was transferred to Coimbra). At Rome, Charles of Anjou, in the character of senator, professed to found a place of “general study” for law and arts in 1265; but this attempt seems to have been abortive, and the university of Rome really owes its beginning to a bull issued by Boniface VIII a few months before his fall. The Germans, having as yet no university of their own, continued to resort chiefly to Paris and Bologna. The pre-eminent fame of Paris for the successful cultivation of all branches of learning was still maintained. Honorius III in 1218 endeavoured to limit its range of subjects by forbidding lectures on law; but this exclusion of the popular science did not last long, as we find about the middle of the century that Paris had the three “faculties” of theology, law, and medicine, in addition to the older division into four “nations” which made up the body of “artists’’ or students in arts. In 1250 the famous school of the Sorbonne was founded in connection with the university, by Robert, a native of Sorbonne in Champagne, canon of Paris, and chaplain to St. Lewis; and, although it is a mistake to speak of this as the theological faculty of the university, the two were in so far the same that the members of one were very commonly members also of the other.

It was in this age that the scholastic philosophy received its full development under the influence of an increased study of Aristotle. Hitherto the acquaintance of western readers with this philosopher’s writings had been confined to one or two books which were accessible in the old translations of Victorinus and Boethius; but he now became more fully known, partly through translations from the Arabic versions current in Spain, and partly through direct translations from the originals, of which copies had been brought into the West in consequence of the Latin conquest of Constantinople. By the opening of these sources a great eagerness for the study of dialectics and metaphysics was excited. But in the case of Aristotle there were grave prejudices of long standing to be overcome. In earlier times, he had been in favour with some heretical sects, and on that account (if on no other) had been denounced by many writers of orthodox reputation and of high authority, down to St. Bernard, in whose day he had fallen under fresh suspicion on account of Abelard’s fondness for him. His works, in passing through the hands of Mussulman and other translators, had been mixed up with foreign matter which brought on him additional disrepute. And in the beginning of the century, his name incurred still further obloquy from the circumstance that Amalric of Bène and David of Dinant professed to ground their pantheistic speculations on his method. He was therefore involved in the condemnation of those speculations by the council of Paris in 1209, although it would seem that the writings which were condemned under his name were really the work of his Arabic followers; the legate Robert Curzon, in 1215, while allowing the study of his dialectics, forbade that of his books on metaphysics and natural philosophy; and in 1231, Gregory IX issued a bull by which they were again forbidden “until they should have been examined, and purged from all suspicion of errors”. Yet, as Aristotle became more known through the new translations from the Greek, which showed him without the additions of his Mahometan expositors, he found students, admirers, and commentators among men of the greatest eminence as teachers and of unquestioned orthodoxy, such as Albert the Great and Thomas of Aquino; and thus, from having been suspected and condemned, he came to be very widely regarded even as an infallible oracle. While his system was employed to give form and method to Christian ideas, he was considered as a guide to secular knowledge, on which theology was said to repose, while rising above it; and some divines, finding themselves perplexed between the authority of the Stagyrite and that of the Scriptures, attempted to reconcile the two by a theory that philosophical and religious belief might be different from each other and independent of each other—that a proposition might at once be philosophically true and theologically false. It was not unnatural that such notions should excite suspicion; and thus we find Gregory IX, in a letter written in 1228 to the professors of Paris, reproving them for the unprofitable nature of their studies—for relying too much on the knowledge of natural things, and making theology, the queen, subordinate to her handmaid, philosophy.

The leader of the Schoolmen was an Englishman, Alexander of Hales (Alensis), who taught philosophy and theology at Paris, entered the Franciscan order about 1222, and died in 1245. With him began that method of discussing a subject by arraying the arguments on each side in a syllogistic form, which became characteristic of the schoolmen in general. The authority which Alexander acquired appears from the lofty titles bestowed on him—“Doctor of Doctors” and “Irrefragable Doctor.” William of Auvergne, who held the see of Paris from 1228 to 1249, deserves mention as a famous schoolman, although his works are on a less colossal scale than those of his eminent contemporaries.

The titles of “Great” and of “Universal Doctor” were given to Albert, a Swabian of noble family, who taught at Cologne, and, after having held the bishopric of Ratisbon from 1260 to 1263, resigned it, that he might die in his profession as a simple Dominican friar. Albert is described as showing much reading, but (as might be expected in his age) a want of critical skill; great acuteness in argument; a courage which sometimes ventures even to contradict the authority of Aristotle; and an originality which entitles him to be regarded as the real founder of the Dominican system of doctrine. Under Albert, at Cologne, studied Thomas, a member of a great family which held the lordship of Aquino and other possessions in the Apulian kingdom. Thomas of Aquino was born in 1225 or 1227, and after having been educated from the age of five at Monte Cassino, from which he passed to the university of Naples, entered into the Dominican order in 1243, greatly against the will of his nearest relations. At Cologne he was chiefly distinguished for his steady industry, which led his fellow-students to style him in derision the “dumb ox of Sicily”; but Albert was able to discern the promise of greatness in him, and reproved the mockers by telling them that the dumb ox would one day fill the world with his lowing. In 1255, Thomas was nominated as professor of theology at Paris, but the disputes between his order and the university delayed his occupation of the chair until 1257. He also taught at Rome and elsewhere; his eminence was acknowledged by an offer of the archbishopric of Naples, which he declined; and he had been summoned by Gregory X to attend the council of Lyons, in 1274, with a view to controverting the peculiarities of the Greeks who were expected to be present, when he died on his way, at the monastery of Fossa Nuova. It is said that a short time before his death he was seen, while praying before a crucifix, to be raised into the air, and that the Saviour was heard to say to him from the crucifix—“Thou hast written well of me, Thomas; what reward wilt thou receive for thy labour?” To which he replied, “Lord, I desire no other than Thyself.”

Among the best known of his voluminous writings are the ‘Summa Theologica’, which stands foremost among works of its class; the ‘Catena Aurea’, a commentary on the four Gospels, compiled with much skill from the fathers; original commentaries on many books of Scripture; an elaborate commentary on the ‘Sentences’ of Peter Lombard, the great text-book of the schools; a treatise ‘Of the truth of the Catholic Faith, against the Gentiles’; some writings against the Greek church; and a book ‘Of the Government of Princes’—of which, however, the latter part is said to be by another author. The writings of Thomas became a standard of orthodoxy in the Dominican order, so that everyone who entered it was bound to uphold the opinions of the “Angelical Doctor” or “Angel of the Church”. His master, Albert, is reported to have said of him that he had “put an end to all labour, even unto the world’s end.” At the council of Trent, nearly three hundred years after his death, the ‘Summa’ was placed on the secretary’s desk, beside the Holy Scriptures, as containing the orthodox solution of all theological questions. Thomas was canonized in 1323 by John XXII  and in 1567, Pius V, himself a Dominican, assigned to him the next place after the four great doctors of the West.

John of Fidanza, a Tuscan, who is better known by his conventual name of Bonaventura, endeavoured to combine the mystical element with the scholastic dialecticism. He was born in 1221 at Bagnorea, in the Roman states, and in consequence of a vow which his mother had made on his being delivered from a dangerous sickness by the prayers of St. Francis, he entered the Franciscan order at the age of twenty-one. He studied under Alexander of Hales, who expressed his feeling of Bonaventura’s purity of character by saying that in him Adam did not appear to have sinned. At the age of thirty-four he was chosen general of his order, and, after having held this dignity two years, he became a professor of theology at Paris, where he had before taught. In 1265, he declined the archbishopric of York, which was offered to him by Clement IV, and on the death of that pope, the Franciscans assert that Bonaventura might, but for his own unwillingness, have become his successors

After having been made cardinal-bishop of Albano by Gregory X, he died at the council of Lyons in 1274. He was canonized by Sixtus IV (a Franciscan pope) in 1482, and in 1587 Sixtus V assigned to the “Seraphic Doctor” the sixth place among the great teachers of the church. Bonaventura’s devotion to the blessed Virgin has been already mentioned. He is said to rely more on Scripture than the great Dominican, but to be inferior to him in knowledge, and to be guided in a greater degree by imagination and feeling. It is said that when Aquinas, on visiting him, asked for a sight of the books from which his learning had been derived, Bonaventura answered by pointing to the crucifix.

Thus far the schoolmen had differed but little in opinion. But among the Franciscans arose a teacher who introduced important novelties—John Duns Scotus, the “Subtle Doctor”, who appears to have been a Northumbrian, although some refer his birth to Dunse in Scotland, or to Ireland. Duns studied at Oxford, where he is said to have displayed a great genius for mathematical science. He became a doctor, and taught at Paris until 1308; but beyond these facts, his life is enveloped in the obscurity which some connect with his name of Scotus, and declare to be characteristic of his style. His death, according to some authorities, took place at the age of thirty-four; according to others, at forty-three or at sixty-three, while, if it were true that he had been a pupil of Alexander of Hales, he must have nearly attained fourscore : and, if the vast extent of his works makes it impossible to believe the first of these accounts, it is difficult to understand how his fame should have begun so late in life as the last of them would require us to suppose. To the Franciscans Scotus became what Aquinas was to the Dominicans; it was decreed in general assemblies of the order that all teachers should inculcate his opinions, both in theology and in philosophy and on some important questions, both theological and philosophical, the followers of these two great oracles were strongly and perseveringly opposed to each other.

Of a different character from the reputations of those who won for themselves such titles as “Seraphic”, “Angelical”, and the like, was that of Roger Bacon, the “Wonderful Doctor,” as he was justly styled. Bacon, born near Ilchester in 1214, was educated at Oxford and at Paris, and at the age of thirty-four became a Franciscan friar. His researches in physical science, while they placed him immensely in advance of his contemporaries, drew on him the popular suspicion of magic, and exposed him to persecution at the hands of his Franciscan superiors. Clement IV, who, when legate in England, had heard of his fame, desired in 1266 that the friar’s books should be sent to Rome; and in consequence of this, Bacon, who explains that his opinions had not before been formally embodied in writing, produced within fifteen months (notwithstanding great difficulties as to the expense of materials and other necessary charges) his ‘Opus Majus,’ his ‘Opus Minus’ and his ‘Opus Tertium’. But, as the pope died soon after, Bacon derived no benefit from his favour; he was again imprisoned by his monastic superiors, was condemned under the generalship of Jerome of Ascoli (afterwards Pope Nicolas IV)rand did not recover his liberty until the year before his death, which took place in 1292.

Bacon strongly denounces the idea that philosophy and theology can be opposed to each other. True philosophy, he says, is not alien from, but is included in, the wisdom of God. All wisdom is contained in Holy Scripture, but it must be explained by means of law and philosophy; and he protests against the injustice of condemning philosophy on account of the abuse made of it by persons who do not couple it with its end, which is the truth of Christ. On the one hand, we must use philosophy in the things of God; on the other hand, in philosophy we must assume many things which are divine. Bacon often speaks with much severity of the defects which prevailed in the studies of his time; that boys were admitted into the religious orders, and proceeded to theological study, without having laid the groundwork of a sound grammatical education; that the original languages of Holy Scripture were neglected; that children got their knowledge of Scripture, not from the Bible itself, but from versified abridgments that the translations of Aristotle were generally wretched, with the exception of those made by Grossetête, an early patron of his studies, whom he everywhere mentions with deep respect; that lectures on the ‘Sentences’ were preferred to lectures on Scripture, and that Scripture was neglected on account of the faults of translators; that the civil law, as being more lucrative than philosophy, drew men away from the study of it; that the preachers of his time were bad, with the exception of Bertold the German, whose performances in this way he considered to be worth nearly as much as those of all the Dominicans and the Franciscans together. He professes that, although he himself had laboured forty years in study, he would undertake by a compendious method to teach all that he knew within six months—a boast which might excite the envy of those instructors who. in our own day undertake to communicate universal knowledge by short and summary processes. He complains bitterly of the difficulties he had met with in his studies, on which he declares that in twenty years he had spent two thousand pounds. The troubles which this extraordinary man endured at the hands of his brotherhood furnish a melancholy illustration of the lot which then awaited any one who, by a perhaps somewhat ostentatious display of originality, might provoke questions, however unfounded, as to his soundness in the established faith.

The object of the schoolmen was to apply the syllogistic method of reasoning to proving the truth of the church’s traditional doctrine, and to the ascertainment of truth or probability in points which the church’s authority had not decided. Their system deserves high praise for the thoroughness with which it discusses the subjects which fall within its range—viewing each subject in all possible lights, dividing and distinguishing with elaborate subtlety, laying down clearly the doctrine which the writer approves, stating objections and disposing of them, balancing probabilities and authorities, and bringing the opinion which is to be maintained safe and triumphant through all the conflict. If cumbrous and inelegant, it makes up for these defects by exhaustiveness and precision; if fettered by the conditions of deference to authority, it derives from these conditions a protection against the wildness of speculation into which intellects trained to the highest degree of refinement might naturally have been disposed to run. On the other hand, there was in such a method much of temptation to sophistry, to frivolous and unsubstantial exercises of acuteness; and the results attained by it were too commonly ill-proportioned to the pomp and toil of investigation by which they had been reached. No one, assuredly, can be justified in speaking with the ignorant contempt which once prevailed of a system which for centuries ruled the minds of mankind, and which, in age after age, engaged in its service the profound and ingenious thought and the prodigious industry of those who were foremost among their contemporaries. Yet among the many subjects which now offer themselves to the attention of educated men, the claims of the scholastic philosophy to engage our time and labour in the study of the massive and multitudinous volumes in which it is embodied can hardly be considered as of very urgent obligation.